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RECOLLECTIONS 
AND REFLECTIONS 





RECOLLECTIONS 
AND REFLECTIONS 


BY AA 
NEWMAN SMYTH 


WITH COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES 
BY 


+ 
BENJAMIN W. BACON, D.D., LL.D. 
REV. PETER AINSLIE 
RT. REV. JAMES DE WOLF PERRY, JR. 


NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1926 


CopyricHt, 1926, By 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 


Printed in the United States of America 





FOREWORD 


Newman Smyth, son of William Smyth, Pro- 
fessor of Mathematics in Bowdoin University, 
was born in Brunswick, Maine, June 25, 1843. 

He died at his home in New Haven, Connec- 
ticut, January 6, 1925. 

The writing of these Recollections and Re- 
flections occupied the closing months of his life. 
He completed the final chapter on Saturday, 
January 3, 1925. That night his last illness 
began, and he died early Tuesday morning. 

The commemorative addresses were deliv- 
ered at memorial services held in Center Church, 
New Haven, Connecticut, May 5, 1925. 


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CHAPTER 


II. 


XII. 


CONTENTS 


RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD AND 
EarRLy ScHOOL-Days . 


PuiLtirps ACADEMY AND BowpolIN CoL- 
LEGE . 


ArMyY LIFE 
ANDOVER SEMINARY 


BEGINNINGS OF MINISTRY AND STUDIES 
ABROAD . 


THE ANDOVER CONTROVERSY AND ITs 
RESULTS 


Work IN New Haven . 
PAE HOOK SN, ee. ela waa ee ative Bre 
MopeErRNISM. TYRRELL. 
SSCURCHALINITY Sh. choy Weir nits alco uts 


PARABLE OF THE LOBSTER AND THE 
CREEDS . 


Last REFLECTIONS . 


COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES 


PAGE 


104 
121 
144 
161 
168 


192 
198 


213 


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RECOLLECTIONS 
AND REFLECTIONS 





CHAPTER I 


RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD AND 
EARLY SCHOOL-DAYS 


NE often wishes he knew how far back 
into childhood run the first recollections 
he has of himself. Most of us have some 

early impressions of ourselves. Beyond that, 
memory becomes a blank. A little child’s self- 
consciousness is ever changing, evanescent as 
the lights and shadows of the passing clouds at 
the dawn of day. It may scientifically be that 
we begin to come to ourselves even before we 
are born. Far-off influences from generations 
past have entered into the making of the new- 
born infant. The physicist, indeed, in his search 
for the beginnings of matter, has the advantage 
of us in our psychological inquiries into the 
beginnings of ourselves. With his subtle mea- 
surements he may pursue matter far back to- 
ward its last hiding-places in electrons and the 
ethereal something pervading space, but a man 
has to take himself very much for granted as 
he knows himself now. 

There is one early but undated recollection 
that I have of myself, which every now and 
then I find framing itself out of my subcon- 
sciousness. It is the picture of a little boy lying 

I 


2 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


in the grass beneath an apple-tree in his father’s 
garden, and, while waiting to see some ripe 
apples fall from the tree, looking up into the 
blue sky and the passing white clouds and 
wondering what there would be if there were 
nothing. I must at least have been old enough 
at that time to be allowed to eat apples, as 
that single apple-tree stands out in my mem-— 
ory after all these years. There are three ex- 
periences of wonder in a lifetime. One is the 
first wonder of the little child, flitting about 
from one thing to another; then the thoughtful 
wonder of the mature man, seeking in all things 
to know; and, finally, there may follow the 
restful wonder of old age, rich with all the mem- 
ories of the past, looking forward to the things 
beyond all knowledge that are about to be re- 
vealed. It is this last serene wonder of the 
spirit that is in man which may be meant in 
the reputed saying of Jesus found in an old 
Egyptian papyrus: ‘‘Jesus saith, Let not him 
that seeks . . . cease until he finds, and when 
he finds he shall be astonished; astonished he 
shall reach the kingdom, and having reached 
the kingdom he shall rest.” 

Often in my earlier years there would come 
to me the wish, and at times an indescribable 
desire, to be for a few minutes at least some- 
body else, so that I might know how things 
seemed to him, whether he saw things as I saw 
them, whether he was just like myself in his 


CHILDHOOD 3 


thoughts and feelings, or what he seemed to 
himself to be. This may have arisen from supér- 
sensitiveness in a child, and though it may 
seem to belong rather to a later period of re- 
flection, 1t exists in my memory as one of the 
first impressions, one of the “‘obstinate ques- 
tionings” of my coming to knowledge of my- 
self. In such early feelings and self-conscious- 
ness I find the germs of the interest in philos- 
ophy, theology, and science which have become 
the dominant studies of my life. I often think 
that two elements must have been combined 
in my heredity—that I was a born mystic and 
a born sceptic—and that my intellectual life 
has been for me, more or less consciously, the 
assertion and reconciliation of both. 

This vague sense of unreality, these fleeting 
shadows at times over my consciousness of ex- 
istence, led me, perhaps when I was too young, 
to read metaphysical books and, later on, to 
follow with keen interest philosophical specu- 
lations and scientific researches which seemed 
to bring me nearer toward the elements and 
ultimate limits of our knowledge both of nature 
and of mind. But those “shadowy recollec- 
tions,” as Wordsworth depicts them in his 
“Ode on Intimations of Immortality,” had 
little consciously to do with the growing boy 
in my happy daily life of play and schooling. 
Yet to this day, as I read again and again 
Wordsworth’s ode, it seems to me more than 


4 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


anything else to reveal to me the meanings of 
my own innermost consciousness of being and 
of life through all these lengthening years. 

One of my earliest distinct recollections of 
my education is the proud day when I was per- 
mitted to enter the primary public school. I 
was one of the youngest who passed, later, the 
examination for entrance into the grammar- 
school, and that day still stands out afar off 
as an epoch in my life. I might have been 
ready for college at the age of fifteen, but I 
was a nervous child and my parents held me 
back for a year. I remember that I was timid 
and especially afraid of being left alone in the 
dark. I have since wished, on some of my 
hunting-trips, that I could actually run across 
and have a shot at some of the bears which I 
thought or dreamed I saw in early childhood. 
My early nervous feeling of the darkness lin- 
gered for some years. I can recollect how, some- 
times, I would quicken my steps or even break 
for a moment into a run, when I had been sent 
on some errand to the store and darkness over- 
took me before I landed safely at home. In- 
deed, what seemed to be a certain subconscious 
dread of the darkness lingered with me until 
by one desperate remedy I cured myself of it 
when I was at Phillips Academy. I roomed on 
the third story of one of those commons which 
now happily have become extinct. No possi- 
ble harm could have met one on the stairways, 


CHILDHOOD AES 


unless he should turn and fall down them; but 
there was no light in them and several times I 
caught myself running up them as though I 
was pursued by some unknown peril. I made 
up my mind one night, when I found myself 
half breathless after one such sudden ascent, 
that I would stop that kind of foolishness once 
for all. So down the stairs I went, opened the 
door of the cellar, which I knew was a favorite 
stalking-place for rats, and stumbled round 
until I found a log of wood to sit on. Putting 
my finger on my pulse, I resolved, survive or 
perish, to sit there until it ceased beating 
quickly and I could count it as normal. Having 
made this heroic resolution, I soon found that 
my pulse was ashamed to beat too quickly, 
and I rose up and mounted the stairs as slowly 
as I could and went to my room. I never after- 
ward had any nervousness going up those 
stairs. 

I wonder whether this nervous trepidation 
when alone in the darkness, which lingered 
longer perhaps with me than with most chil- 
dren, is not a physical reminiscence of some 
far-off prehistoric state, when man was emerg- 
ing from a primitive animal existence. To such 
instinctive apprehension there is added the hu- 
man sense of dependence, the sense of loneli- 
ness and utter nothingness in the midst of the 
infinite unknown. I have sometimes felt this 
human sense of utter loneliness and human in- 


6 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


significance when, in the depths of the Maine 
woods, I was returning late of an evening from 
the pools of a voiceful stream over which I had 
been casting my flies and, as I entered the woods 
into the silence of the forests, the darkness 
gathered around me—a mere atom of being in 
the vastness of the unknown universe—I un- 
consciously quickened my pace along the trail, 
and was glad when I reached the bright camp- 
fire and heard the cheerful voices of men. 

More often, especially in these later years, 
there has come to me under similar circum- 
stances a restful sense of communion with 
nature, of man’s oneness with all the outward 
world, of one and the same spirit in and 
through all. 

Once in my army life the same sense of lone- 
liness came for a moment over me. I was going 
alone, along a road which led from the fort 
where my regiment was stationed, out some 
little distance to relieve an officer on our 
picket-line. It was moonlight and there was 
not the slightest occasion for fear along that 
road. Not a shot could be heard from the line 
in front; but suddenly, as though from some- 
thing springing out of my subconsciousness, I 
found I had paused in my steps. It was but 
for an instant; yet for the moment an irrepres- 
sible feeling stole over me—what if then and 
there I, a mere atom in the world, unobserved, 
unheeded, unknown, should suddenly perish? 


CHILDHOOD ° 


Then, disappearing as it came, it caused hardly 
an instant’s pause in my footsteps; but some- 
how that walk out alone to the picket-line with 
that momentary feeling of human solitude has 
remained in my memory as an actual danger 
under fire. Such occasional experiences amid 
the silences and solitudes of nature do not arise, 
I think, from fear of anything that is known; 
they spring rather from our deeper, half-con- 
scious sense of our absolute dependence on the 
infinite unknown. 


In the year 1843 the end of the world had 
been predicted by a prophet named Miller, who 
went about among the people proclaiming that 
the Day of Judgment was at hand. Hundreds 
and thousands of people were alarmed by his 
interpretation of the biblical prophecies and by 
his warnings to escape from the wrath to come. 
It was also a time of general intellectual and 
religious agitation. Emerson characterized it 
in an article which he wrote in July of that 
year on a convention of the Friends of Uni- 
versal Reform: “If the assembly was disorderly 
it was picturesque, madmen, madwomen, men 
with beards, drinkers, Muggletonians, Come- 
outers, groaners, agrarians, Seventh-Day Bap- 
tists, Quakers, abolitionists, Calvinists, Uni- 
tarians, and philosophers—all came successively 
to the top.” 


8 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


The Millerites, as they were called, fixed upon 
April 3 as the day when the end of the world 
would come. To add to the panic, suddenly 
there appeared the great comet of 1843, which, 
with fear and tremblings, was hailed by thou- 
sands as a sign of the coming fulfilment of 
prophecies of the end of the world. Those Mil- 
lerist alarmists based their predictions on the 
same method of interpreting the biblical proph- 
ecies as the fundamentalists of our day ever 
reason from the letter of the Scriptures. They 
might more properly be called the superficial- 
ists. I have an indistinct recollection of my 
boyhood, when a still later date for the end of 
the world had been fixed upon by the few sur- 
viving Millerites, and some of them were said 
to have met early before dawn on a hillside, 
not far from my home, to see the Lord come. 
It is an interesting note of comparison between 
then and now that among the literalists of our 
days there is a general tendency to fall into 
second-advent theories of the last day and the 
final judgment. 

My recollections of my boyhood carry me 
back to the beginnings of the antislavery agi- 
tation and the formation of the Free Soil party. 
My father was one of the early antislavery 
agitators. I find in an early letter of his to an- 
other of those pioneers in that movement the 
following extract, which is worthy of reproduc- 
ing, as it serves to indicate the position and 


CHILDHOOD 9 


spirit at that time of those antislavery men 
who could not follow Garrison in his extreme 
denunciatory agitation. He wrote: “I see by 
the papers that you have had the honor of 
being mustered into the good cause, a circum- 
stance which I suppose will abate nothing from 
your zeal, nor lead to feeling in a less degree the 
importance of being up and doing, working 
while the day lasts. I am obliged to confess so 
many unwise and unchristian things in brother 
Garrison’s style of advocating the cause that 
if I denounce for his unchristian way 
of opposing us, I must do the same thing with 
Garrison for his unchristian way of advocating 
the cause. The charity which enables me to 
bide the faults of the latter helps me at least 
to submit patiently to the wrong-headed oppo- 
sition of the former. I begin almost to despair 
of a possible termination of slavery in this 
country, the system has become so inwrought 
into the very vitals of the nation, and has 
taken such deep hold, especially of the church, 
chat it seems to me that we are now almost 
given over to destruction. Still, however, it is 
our duty to do what we can to avert the evil.” 
Among my recollections of my first school- 
days is that of a private school of a few of us 
children in the home of Mrs. Harriet Beecher 
Stowe. She had a relative as a governess for 
her own children, and she took in a few others 
from the families of the college professors. [ 








10 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


have never forgotten a remark she made to me 
one morning when she came into the room, and, 
looking over my copy-book in which I was try- 
ing to write, exclaimed: ‘“Why, Newman, your 
h’s are all drunk!” It was to us children that 
she read, one day, a portion of what some time 
after was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” It was some- 
thing about little Eva. | 

Not infrequently Mrs. Stowe and her hus- 
band, together with Professor Upham, in his 
religious temperament a quietist, used to meet 
in my father’s house. As a boy I listened as 
they discussed the antislavery issue, and once 
I heard them say that they believed the issue 
could not be settled without the shedding of 
blood. Not that they desired war, or would 
have carried willingly their agitation to such 
extremity, but they did seem to think that in 
the providential dealing of God with the peo- 
ple, so great a wrong as slavery could not be 
settled without the shedding of blood. Pro- 
fessor Upham seemed to be especially the 
prophet in that little group at my father’s fire- 
side, while, as I recall them after these many 
years, Mrs. Stowe used to sit silently with her 
face supported by her hand, as one dreaming 
of the future. Sooner than they had thought 
their words became true. Mrs. Stowe, then 
hardly known beyond the college circles, be- 
came one of the great influences in the over- 
coming of slavery. Her ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin” 


CHILDHOOD II 


was first published as a serial in a weekly paper, 
The National Era, a small antislavery paper 
printed in Washington. I recall vividly how 
my father would bring the successive chapters 
home from the post-office, and it would be read 
to the family, and how we children were moved 
by the story. Uncle Tom and Eva were the 
first saint and heroine chronicled in my boy- 
hood’s calendar. 

Brought up in such an atmosphere it is not 
surprising that with one or two other boys I 
undertook the issuing of a small boys’ written 
paper, which we proudly called The Northern 
Light and which we circulated in the neighbor- 
hood, particularly among the few who were 
not so fully possessed of antislavery zeal as 
we were. I soon conceived the more ambitious 
idea of printing our paper. Having no means of 
buying type, I used to go down to the village 
printer’s office and search among the cast-off 
type for the best ones that had fallen among 
them. With an occasional gift from the printer 
of a few not quite so worn, I procured enough 
to warrant my first attempt at printing. But 
then came the question of a press. I had often 
watched the printer at his work with his hand- 
press, and seen how the joint worked that gave 
him the impression. This I sought to imitate 
by setting my little form just high enough up 
on a stool to use my elbow as a toggle-joint, and 
to come down on it with the required force to 


12 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


get a good impression. I used to beg of the 
printer a piece of the required preparation for 
the inking-pad, until I learned to make it my- 
self. Still later, not being satisfied with modest 
headline, I carved out of a block of hard wood 
the desired large letters, and The Northern Light 
appeared in full form. The successive numbers 
have long been lost. I would give much could 
I see one of them now. I do not remember just 
how old I was when I entered thus into politi- 
cal controversy, but there was at least no con- 
trol of the editorial columns by the counting- 
room. 

My education in citizenship and a lifelong 
interest in public affairs began early—as a boy 
in connection with the annual town meeting. 
Usually we boys were put out when we crept 
into the crowded hall where the town meetings 
at Brunswick were held; but then we would 
manage to crawl up on the window-sills out- 
side, where, perched above interference from 
within, we could look down on the whole tumul- 
tuous scene and join in the occasional cheers. 
The usual moderator, an ex-governor, had a 
majestic presence and a commanding voice, 
and it was a delight to us boys to see and hear 
him rule that often boisterous crowd. There are 
chiselled in the epitaph on his tombstone these 
striking words from one of his speeches: ‘‘ There 
is an unwritten history which has never been 
recorded.” 


CHILDHOOD 13 


In those town meetings at Brunswick there 
was usually a fight on between those who 
wished to appropriate more money for the 
public schools and village improvements, and 
a Bourbon element, as we used to call them, 
who had made money out of ship-building and 
trade in rum and molasses from the East Indies. 
Those town meetings constituted one of the 
chief excitements as well as educational courses 
of my boyhood. They are especially pleasing 
recollections for me, as my honored father 
fought from the beginning not only for the 
schools and village improvements, but also for 
the whole grade-school system throughout the 
State of Maine. The obligation of taking active 
part in public affairs and the value of Ameri- 
can citizenship were elements of the very at- 
mosphere in which I lived, as early as I have 
any distinct recollections. Years afterward I 
witnessed the last town meeting held in New 
Haven, when the town was finally merged in 
the city. Then an obstinate citizen held the 
floor for a considerable time against some of the 
best lawyers of the city, much to my amuse- 
ment as well as to the renewal of my recollec- 
tions of the town meetings of the days of my 
youth. 

We boys, in that secluded college circle on 
the hill at Brunswick, were brought up from 
childhood, more than half a century ago, under 
most wholesome and happy conditions. As I 


14 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


look back through the long years to my birth- 
place, it seems to me like an Eden into which, 
as yet, no evil thing had entered. There was 
given to us the knowledge of the good long be- 
fore we came to any realizing sense of the evil. 
There was an innocent succession of us, the 
younger receiving the benefit of the instructions 
of the older, falling heirs to their tools and 
sports and, above all, as we came of sufficient 
age, to their liberty of sailing and camping 
among the islands of Casco Bay. We had lots 
of out-of-doors in which to roam at large, pine- 
trees to climb, a near-by trout brook to fish, a 
river to go venturesomely to swim in. I realize 
now what anxieties for us our parents must at 
times have felt when, as we became old enough, 
they would let us go off for days of sailing down 
the bay. It was an epoch in our lives when our 
older brothers would take us for the first time 
with them on one of their cruises. There was 
not much in all the region round about which 
we did not explore. We knew where to find 
the first mayflowers on the sunny sides of rocks 
or stumps, when the snows still lingered on the 
fields. The first ice on neighboring ponds caught 
the ring of our skates, and sometimes we learned 
from experience how deep the water beneath 
us was as the thin ice cracked and let us down. 
The river, where we sometimes ventured, was 
more dangerous, yet none of us managed to 
fall into it and get himself drowned. 


CHILDHOOD 15 


We had to make our own playthings in 
those days, and we learned to make for our- 
selves bows and arrows, of course, wooden guns, 
sleds, snow-ploughs, and skates—the runners 
of one pair of which, I remember, were tem- 
pered over for me by an accommodating village 
blacksmith, and the woods turned out from 
our own workshop, making as good skates, at 
least for long-distance use, as might then have 
been found. One of my older brothers had suc- 
ceeded in manufacturing a small fire-engine 
which I fell heir to and managed to put in re- 
pair, so we organized a fire company. Our 
parents, however, seeing we could reach with 
quite a stream the second stories, commandeered 
it, and we were obliged to use it occasionally 
in washing the windows. When, little by little, 
we were allowed to have some powder for the 
Fourth of July, we dissected a Roman candle 
and, seeing how it was made, we successfully 
constructed a number of them for our cele- 
bration. 

To learn thus some use of tools, as we boys 
did then because we had to make things for 
our own amusement, has always seemed to me 
a valuable part of a good education. For it 
forms the habit of taking hold and trying to do 
whatever at any moment needs to be done. 
One so trained will not wait in any breakdown 
for some one else to come to his aid, but, with 
whatever he may lay his hands on, will try at 


16 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


once to help himself out. Indeed, the habit 
thus early formed may influence one’s way of 
taking hold of things all the rest of his days. I 
have sometimes thought that some elementary 
practice in the use of tools might be a useful 
accompaniment of knowledge of the classics 
required for admission to college. Nor is the 
recreation and pleasure in after-life of some 
ability to make things, to be despised. I have 
still the tool-chest to which I fell heir from my 
father’s house, and only this last summer I had 
occasion to use the fore-plane, which I remem- 
ber using so long ago when my elbows were 
hardly high enough to enable me to push it 
over the work-bench in the old home. I can 
take a moment’s vacation and be as a care- 
free boy again, when I use that plane. 

Among other advantages of a healthy out- 
of-door life which my birthplace afforded me, 
was the neighborhood of one of the most beau- 
tiful sheets of water on our Atlantic coast, 
Casco Bay. One end of its farthest reach in- 
land is Marquoit Bay. Broadening out from 
that, it encloses in its waters some hundred and 
more islands, including Portland harbor, afford- 
ing ever-changing groupings of islands and in- 
lets and glimpses of the open sea beyond. As 
small boys we were permitted to go with the 
older ones fishing from one of its wharfs, and 
later sometimes to accompany them on their 
sails. As we grew up we were allowed ourselves 


CHILDHOOD 17 


the freedom of the seas, and would sometimes 
spend days and nights sailing wherever the 
wind let us and camping in the open air, or 
sometimes in some barn on an island, as night 
might overtake us and good luck might per- 
mit. We grew up to be expert sailors, and in- 
deed to know from frequent experiences a 
good number of the shoals and mussel-beds on 
which we had gone aground. There was hardly 
a nook or narrow passageway in those miles of 
water and islands which we had not explored. 
I have often wondered at the courage of our 
parents, who gave us such liberty—wisely, I 
think now, for the making of us—when for days 
sometimes we would be gone, and winds would 
blow and thunder-storms shake their houses, 
while we were they knew not where. But they 
were always glad to see us home, which they 
rarely did until we had exhausted all the food 
we had taken with us or had managed with 
fish-lines and perhaps a shotgun to pick up 
from the waters of the sea and the birds of the 
air. We were never upset, though many a 
squall had overtaken us; and we managed 
always to keep ourselves from being wrecked 
upon the rocky points or devouring ledges 
among which we sometimes had to beat our 
way in the fogs. Boylike, we made some fool- 
ish ventures (of which we said little on our re- 
turn to the parental roof), and I recall also 
some laughable experiences. 


18 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


Later on, in my college days, I used frequently 
to spend some vacation days on Casco Bay, 
but with a better boat, more seaworthy than 
we could get possession of as boys. On one of 
these trips, after a wet day, one of my com- 
panions had left his wet shoes by our smoulder- 
ing camp-fire overnight to dry, to discover in 
the morning that they had turned to fragments 
of burnt leather and ashes. The next day, put- 
ting in to a wharf in Harpswell, we found the 
pier in possession of a group of young girls of 
our acquaintance. The rest of us were soon up 
on the wharf, while he was left disconsolate, 
hiding his feet under the sail, until at last we 
managed to obtain a pair of old shoes from a 
fisherman, and putting them on him amid 
shouts of laughter, presented him to the girls. 
After that he went in college under the name 
Burnt Boots. 

Once a professor, whom we had invited to go 
with us, but who was more familiar with 
Ulysses’ travels than with our course amid the 
isles of Casco Bay, came near wrecking us on 
one of the worst ledges in the whole bay. We 
had made our camp near the end of a snug little 
harbor at one end of Jewell’s Island, the nar- 
row entrance to which was between a steep 
bank with deep water at its base and, on the 
other side, a dangerous ledge. We had left the 
professor in the camp to keep the fire going one 
afternoon. As we were belated in returning 


CHILDHOOD 19 


until after dark, and the fog set in, he became 
anxious about us. We had shaped our course 
so well that we had no apprehensions as we 
approached the entrance to the harbor. We 
had taken the precaution, however, to put one 
of us as lookout on the bow, lest we should 
happen to make too long a stretch on a short 
tack from the big bank to the opposite ledge. 
We were sailing in rightly on the mark on the 
shore indicated by our camp-fire, when suddenly 
we found that we were almost in the foam of 
the breakers. Fortunately a quick word and 
action, and the boat came about just in the 
nick of time. We were puzzled, however, to 
understand it, until, hugging the other side 
closely, we caught sight of the form of the pro- 
fessor heaping brush on a fire which he had 
made on the point below our camp, as far out 
as he could go toward the ledge. Of course we 
had taken his false beacon for our camp-fire! In 
his anxiety for us he had thus come near mak- 
ing for himself the reputation of a wrecker. He 
could teach us Greek, but we could have given 
him points on navigation. 

This Jewell’s Island used to be the Ultima 
Thule of our navigation down the bay. It is 
the extreme island at the south of the bay, 
about half-way across its broad expanse; from 
it we could look back among the islands, and 
between the shores far up the bay, while a wall 
of jagged rock guarded its farther end against 


20 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


the open sea. With its quiet, almost enclosed 
harbor, its stretch of open field, and its wood- 
clad elevation and view, it was to us the most 
lovely of all the isles; we used to call it the bride 
of the sea. 

On it was one house occupied by a retired 
seafarer, who was not at all disposed to wel- 
come visitors to the seclusion of his island; but 
with whom we had managed so far to ingratiate 
ourselves as to obtain permission to make use 
of his harbor and to obtain milk for our chow- 
ders; and none better than ours, I must believe, 
were ever made. My companion through all 
these early years—we two used always to sail 
the boat together—in his after-life, after Cap- 
tain Jewell’s death, bought this island and 
made it his summer home. There, once only, 
I visited him; and we recalled together the 
memories of our earlier years. One reason my 
friend had discovered for the old captain’s re- 
luctance to see strange visitors in his seques- 
tered cove. For in rebuilding the old house, to 
make a summer cottage of it, he found, behind 
a panel in the wall, an entrance to a small 
chamber which might well have served as one 
of the hiding-places of the smugglers of rum 
and molasses who formerly flourished along the 
Maine coast. I should add, however, that we 
had never heard any suspicion cast upon the 
captain of being himself engaged in that trade. 

My playmate in childhood and companion in 


CHILDHOOD 21 


sailing among the islands of Casco Bay, he 
who afterward purchased and made his summer 
home on Jewell’s Island—the outpost of all our 
youthful adventures toward the open sea—has 
gone, several years before I may, into the great 
adventure of the life beyond. I think often 
that all this out-of-door life, all that is wrought 
into our memory and our sense of oneness with 
nature, shall not be lost, shall abide with us and 
enable us to enter more richly into the fulfil- 
ments of the life beyond, among the worlds in 
the open sea of infinite space. 

As I look back through these long years upon 
this early out-of-door life, and revisit the scenes 
of my youth and recall especially the oppore 
tunities that we boys had of breaking our necks 
in our rivalries to reach the topmost branches 
of the tallest trees, or drowning ourselves in 
challenging one another to dive from the piers 
in the river, or of wrecking ourselves in learn- 
ing to sail a frail boat in all kinds of weather, 
there is one thing for which I am especially 
thankful to my parents: that they did not allow 
themselves in their anxieties for us to restrain 
us too much from this part of a good educa- 
tion. It may contribute to the formation in 
early life of the instinctive habits of instanta- 
neous perception of any situation, of quick judg- 
ment, and that decisive action which must be 
taken in a moment or the opportunity be lost. 

Among us boys who grew up together in that 


22 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


college neighborhood in my day was one, some- 
what older than myself, who had become inter- 
ested in collecting butterflies and whatever else 
he could catch in his net. We did not altogether 
appreciate his interest in that sport. Once he 
had asked us all to be sure and let him know 
when we might see the first flock of wild geese 
flying across the Brunswick fields. The next 
April Fool’s day, looking up into the sky from 
our yard, adjacent to his, I ran over shouting 
“Wild geese!” Dropping his saw, he came run- 
ning across, gazing all around the sky, saying: 
“Where! Where!” I answered: “April Fool.” 
So for once an incipient theologian got the 
better of a coming naturalist. That boy’s col- 
lection, however, grew steadily, and his early 
pursuit of butterflies led him to increasing knowl- 
edge in which he was never misled into April 
Fool deception. Somewhat later in our college 
days, he would go with us in our sailings about 
Casco Bay, always with the stipulation that, 
when we were crossing certain places, he should 
be allowed to throw over his dredge-net to see 
what he might bring up in the ooze from the 
bottom. We would at times demur, when we 
were in a hurry to get somewhere and the wind 
was light; but under no circumstances would 
his interest flag as he pawed over the mud at the 
bottom of his dredge. Sometimes he would find 
something which would lead him to urge us to 
go back again over our course and dredge the 


CHILDHOOD 24 


bottom once more. In later years he became 
one of America’s best-known naturalists. I have 
occasionally taken down from my book-shelves 
and referred to his complete text-book, “Zo- 
ology,” in its revised edition, by A. S. Packard, 
professor of zoology and geology in Brown 
University. 

The last time I saw him, many years ago, was 
at his summer cottage at Mere Point, near by 
where our youthful ventures down Casco Bay 
out toward the sea used to begin. He was then 
poring over some specimens, and as eager as 
ever to talk about the world of manifold living 
forms which from his childhood he had begun 
to explore. We were born under the same roof 
of the double house which my father and his 
had built when they first became professors in 
Bowdoin College, we two growing up together, 
he seeking to explore the mystery of life in the 
way ever opening before the naturalist, and I 
through the mystery of personal life—these two 
ways of divine revelation. In his undying ea- 
gerness to know he has gone before me into 
the other world, where seeking shall be finding, 
and finding an ever happier seeking. These two 
ways of life, beginning here together, may come 
at last together again, his and mine, in some re- 
newed comradeship in the ever fresh delight of 
seekers after truth. 

My mother looked carefully after my read- 
ing; usually every day she would read something 


24 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


aloud for an hour with us children. Indeed, we 
were brought up on Follin’s “Ancient History,” 
not without some impatience on our part. My 
early and special delights were the Rollo books, 
Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,’ and Fox’s 
“Book of Martyrs,” the girl who was bound 
to a rock by the sea and would not deny her 
faith, while the tide rose around her and she 
was drowned, being my special favorite, and a 
picture of Giant Despair my great delight. 
Novel-reading, particularly for young people, 
was not looked upon with much favor. From 
one of the strictest families of our neighborhood 
all novels were banished; but I remember with 
gratitude the time when my parents allowed me 
to go with some other boys and girls, older than 
myself, to a neighbor’s house, and the intense 
interest which | felt when a school-teacher read 
to us there, on successive days, a chapter of 
‘Ivanhoe.’ It was some time, however, before 
I was allowed to read by myself “David Cop- 
perfield,” which I had found in our house. I 
imagine such precautions were taken, not from 
objections to novels, but from some parental 
solicitude over my nervous excitability. 
Among the earliest recollections of my child- 
hood is that of an alabaster image of a praying 
Samuel, bought from an Italian peddler and 
given as a present to me. During the week I 
kept it carefully put away in a drawer, but on 
Sundays I would take it out, putting myself 


CHILDHOOD 26 


in a similar posture and imitating its example. 

The religious beliefs of my parents were 
evangelical, but not over-dogmatic or intoler- 
ant; the service of God seemed to them to be 
the one best thing in the world for which to 
live. One of our near neighbors, a professor, 
used to preach in a small Episcopal church in 
the village. It was with much curiosity that I 
was allowed for the first time to go with his 
children to an Episcopal church. We boys, at 
an early period of our explorations, came once 
upon a little Roman Catholic chapel, with its 
rude cross and, at the doorway, a basin which 
we thought contained holy water, of which we 
had heard. So, with boyish curiosity, we dipped 
our fingers in it, made the sign of the cross, 
and then ran away, not knowing what might 
happen to us. Such may have been my first 
initiation into church unity, the pursuit of 
which has been so much the work of the clos- 
ing years of my life. Our Sundays were not 
made odious to us, as they were to some, by 
overmuch restrictions. My mother had a happy 
art in guiding us by a word in season, and her 
gracious, intelligent influence, like an atmos- 
phere, pervades still all my memories of my 
childhood and youth. Truly it is a blessed thing 
to have as the background of all one’s life the 
memory of such a home—like the pure light 
just above the horizon, before the dawn fades 
into the light of common day. 


CHAPTER iit 


PHILLIPS ACADEMY AND BOWDOIN 
COLLEGE 


WAS barely twelve years old when I was 

sent to Phillips Academy at Andover, to 

prepare for college. My mother had en- 
deavored, shortly before I left home, to initiate 
me into the study of Latin grammar, but for 
some reason my first attempts to recite it in 
the classroom proved to be miserable failures. 
I was one of the youngest of the class and, con- 
trary to all my previous experience at school, 
I soon found myself at the wrong end of it. 
The teacher used to give out at the end of 
every week our relative average standing. One 
week, after several miserable flunks, I came 
next to one who had won for himself the dis- 
tinction of being the permanent foot of the 
class. He, with others, made fun of me—and 
I made a resolution, or at least something hap- 
pened to me. The next week I started off with 
a fine recitation, much to the astonishment of 
the class. The instructor evidently shared their 
surprise, for he called me up to recite the next 
day, and the next, and every other day that 
week—and at the end I came out next to the 
head of the class. Every week after this I had 

26 


PHILLIPS ACADEMY 27 


to work hard to keep up in that vicinity for the 
rest of my course at Andover. I think that in- 
structor had a good insight into my condition 
when I made that unexpected recitation, and 
that he kept me at it all the week to test and 
to confirm me in it. 

I studied, especially during the last year at 
the academy, more hours a day than I could 
wish to have any boy do, especially on the thin 
diet which we received in the commons in those 
days. 

It seemed to be an object of rivalry between 
several eating-clubs to see which could keep 
the price of board down to the lowest percent- 
age, especially as “‘Uncle Sam” Taylor used to 
revise the bill of fare each week and to strike 
out every article which he regarded as extrava- 
gant. He ruled with a rod of iron. Nothing 
seemed to escape his vigilance. He kept us in 
order through fear. It cast a shiver over a boy 
to be requested to remain after morning prayers 
and stand at the desk before him. There he 
would be sitting in magisterial authority as 
boy after boy, whose name had been so called, 
passed before him. If the offense was serious 
the boy would be told to meet Doctor Taylor 
later, in his house across the way, and at such 
an hour, and to go up-stairs and knock at the 
glass door of his sanctum. There Uncle Sam 
would be found sitting, and the culprit would 
be dealt with in full measure according to his 


28 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


deserts. I remember that, after I had been at 
school a little while, I received such a summons 
to stand before him after prayers, although I 
do not remember what for. He had three chief 
charges in his category of delinquencies: “You 
smoke,” “You wear a tall hat,” “You go over 
to Lawrence,” and several minor items besides. 
Apparently on general principles only he once 
told me that I was on the road to perdition. 
Several years afterward, as I was going up the 
hill to enter Andover Theological Seminary, I 
met him, and I wanted to ask him if he thought 
that, according to his prediction, I had yet 
got there. He welcomed me, however, with a 
cordial greeting. He was naturally a kind- 
hearted man, and after his boys had graduated 
his whole manner toward them seemed to 
change. His disciplinary rigor was the deter- 
mined carrying out of what he believed such a 
preparatory school should be. And in his field 
he would separate, as far and as soon as he 
could, the tares from the wheat. 

I owe more to Doctor Taylor’s classroom 
than to any other instruction I have ever had. 
His methods and his success in forcing us to 
follow them taught us, early in life, two essen- 
tial things, accuracy and thoroughness. He 
would ask some three hundred questions on the 
first seven lines of the Iliad, and he would train 
many of his class to answer most of them. He 
did not teach us literature; only rarely would 


PHILLIPS ACADEMY 29 


he call our attention to some specially poetic 
lines of Homer. But the way he would set us 
at work grubbing after Greek roots and among 
the irregular verbs, and the many weary study- 
hours which I spent in preparing to hurl back 
prompt answers to his rapid fire of such minute 
questions—all this was not lost as a training 
in accuracy in subsequent work. A favorite 
correction of a boy’s translation, often hurled 
at him as he called up another, was “‘too loose.” 
His classroom seemed at times like a veritable 
tournament, especially when he would call up 
and attempt to flunk some of the best pupils 
in the class, who were competing for the final 
honors. He would sometimes keep one up for 
ten or twenty minutes, while the class looked 
on as spectators of the game, and then he would 
suddenly break off and call up another, if an 
answer had not been given to his satisfaction. 
Occasionally, after a particularly fine recita- 
tion, the class would break out in a burst of 
applause. When he saw an inattentive boy he 
would sometimes call suddenly upon him to 
correct the answer of the one who was up. 
Once, I remember, he caught me in that way, 
asking me suddenly to correct another’s trans- 
lation. I had no idea just then what it was, 
but I answered at once, ‘‘Too loose, sir.”” The 
class burst into laughter. Uncle settled back 
for a moment in his chair, and then passed on. 
One day our class got the best of him. He had 


30 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


a limited number of jocose observations which 
he used to fire off at certain fixed places in the 
text-books. These were secretly handed down 
from class to class, the points where they would 
be brought in carefully marked, so that we 
knew just when to expect them and to be pre- 
pared to propitiate him by responsive laughter. 
Once we learned that a certain joke was to be 
expected, and we passed the word around that 
when it came off we should receive it in atten- 
tive silence. The hour came for it, he got it 
off, and settled back in his chair for the usual 
response. Profound silence followed. He looked 
around for a few moments, then called upon a 
few boys to recite. They went speedily down 
under a storm of his most rattling questions. 
The religious influences at Phillips Academy 
in those days were very marked. Conversion 
was urged as the beginning to be expected of 
religious experience and confession of individual 
faith. We were expected thus to experience re- 
ligion, although it should be added that the 
experience so urged was not of an extreme Cal- 
vinistic kind, nor was the fear of eternal pun- 
ishment kept luridly in the foreground. A 
series of sermons preached at that time by 
Professor Phelps, although I cannot recall them 
now, helped me in my own questionings as to 
an “experience of religion,” as the phrase was 
urged frequently then. Even more than to the 
oratory of Professor Park, which was a great 


PHILLIPS ACADEMY 31 


stimulus, I owed at that time to Professor 
Phelps in deepening my spiritual experience. 

Other experiences in the Andover chapel on 
Sunday mornings were of a different nature. 
Uncle Sam, ever watchful over us, used to take 
regularly his seat at the end, next the middle 
aisle, of the back pew; where he could look over 
us all and carefully note our behavior. If we 
lapsed at any time during a long, dry sermon 
into an inattentive position, or ever dared to 
fall asleep, woe be unto us, for we would hear 
our names called out the next morning among 
those requested to remain. To another pro- 
fessor I owe a debt never yet acknowledged. 
He used to preach long and learned sermons, 
and was as an orator unfortunately to be com- 
pared with Professor Park; but between him 
in the pulpit and Uncle Sam at the door, I ac- 
quired the ability occasionally to snatch a little 
slumber while sitting bolt upright. It should, 
however, be gratefully recalled that at Sunday 
evening meetings of our religious Society of 
Inquiry, of all the members of the faculty or 
others who might occasionally come in and 
talk to us, no one was more helpful to us, or 
more welcome than Professor Barrows, under 
whose academic preaching I had occasionally 
snatched a moment so to slumber. 

Doctor Lyman Beecher once preached in the 
Andover Seminary chapel, much to the delight 
of us academy boys. The following day I had 


32 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


the privilege of meeting him at Mrs. Stowe’s, 
and was asked to escort him across the campus. 
I still remember one remark in the conversa- 
tion which I had with him. He turned to me 
and said, full of: enthusiasm: “‘ Yesterday I had 
the great privilege of preaching to three hun- 
dred academy boys!” What a great privilege 
that was! | 

Among my most vivid and happiest recollec- 
tions of those old days at Phillips Academy are 
those of the rocky field back of the divinity 
buildings, which was our only football field. I 
never missed a recreation hour there if I could 
help it. It was a mixed and rough enough game 
as we played it, but yet in spite of its utter 
dissimilarity to the modern scientific football, 
it had some of the rudimentary tactics of the 
present-day game. We used to choose sides, 
as many as were ready to play. The ball would 
be tossed into the field, where it could be kicked 
by whoever could hit it. We had always, back 
of the struggling midfield, some who watched 
for the chance to kick it as it was knocked out, 
and to run with it before us as far as we could 
get away with it. I was usually told off in the 
backfield of the kickers and rushers. Ever since 
then I can hardly pass by the campus where 
students are playing with the ball without feel- 
ing in my legs, at least, the impulse to get a 
kick at it. 

My class (1859) at Phillips Academy was 


PHILLIPS ACADEMY 33 


distinguished by an unprecedented act of re- 
bellion, which seems to have greatly shocked 
some of the older good people of Andover Hill. 
But we thought it was required of us. It was, 
on our part, a protest and rebellion against 
what we had good reason to believe was the 
secret spy system of Uncle Sam upon the stu- 
dents, especially when, as we had reason to 
suppose, one of our own number was paid for 
this service. We had borne it with increasing 
feeling until, one day, an act of friendly depar- 
ture from the requirements of the rules of the 
recitation was granted us by our instructor and 
reported to the principal, as we had reason to 
believe, by one of the student spies. That was 
just too much for us. Consequently a number 
of the class took it upon themselves to inflict 
suitable admonition upon the spy. The ad- 
monition and protest consisted in taking him 
from his room on some pretext, carrying him 
some little distance into the neighboring woods, 
and emptying on him several buckets of water. 
Being one of the youngest of the class, my part 
consisted in standing watch at the entrance of 
the woods to look out for any unexpected in- 
terruption of the proceedings. The next day 
was exciting. The ringleaders, some three or 
so of them whose names had been discovered, 
were promptly suspended. Immediately the 
others who had any part in the proceedings 
sent in a list of their names as equally respon- 


34. RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


sible for it. They, too, were suspended. Then 
the whole class took action supporting them. 
The whole class was put under condemnation 
and recitations suspended. Nothing like this 
had ever happened to shock the good residents 
of Andover. We refused to apologize for our 
act in the terms which Doctor Taylor wrote 
out for us to sign. Then, to bring adequate 
pressure upon us, a warrant was issued against 
the chief ringleaders, some three of them being 
the best scholars and one the president of the 
religious Society of Inquiry. Then a bright 
line of defensive tactics occurred to some of the 
class. They went over to see Ben Butler, who 
had then gained a certain reputation for his 
willingness to defend poor persons in court 
against bad treatment by corporations, and 
they asked him to come over and defend and 
plead our case before the magistrate, and par- 
ticularly to cross-examine Uncle Sam as to his 
alleged spy system. Butler was quick to see 
his opportunity and would have come. But 
when that became known the suit was not 
pressed and negotiations for a settlement with 
us were resumed. Finally we agreed to sign a 
statement to the effect that we were not justi- 
fied in taking the law into our own hands, but 
we refused to apologize for our act of protest 
against the spy system. So the one great re- 
bellion in Phillips Academy was ended. It was 
with some regret, however, that we were not 


PHILLIPS ACADEMY 35 


permitted to see Uncle Sam under cross-exami- 
nation by Ben Butler. 

I am writing this account from unaided mem- 
ory; I do not imagine that any record of our 
act of protest will be found in the records of 
the academy. We did not object, however, to 
Uncle Sam’s occasional going out himself on a 
quiet tour of inspection, or at times suddenly 
appearing at the doors of our rooms, although 
I have known boys to jump out of the back 
windows of the second story of the buildings 
which used to be called Latin Commons, when 
his knock was heard at the door and they were 
supposed to be studying in their own rooms. 
I remember one evening, during my theological 
days at Andover, when some entertainment 
was going on at the near-by female seminary— 
an occasion which gave some temptation to 
mischievous pranks by uninvited students— 
that I saw Uncle Sam hiding behind a tree, and 
that, as I walked on, I saw two academy boys 
coming up on the sidewalk ignorant of what 
they were about to fall into. I could not re- 
sist the temptation, in memory of former years, 
as I passed them on the sidewalk, to point 
over my shoulder and whisper, “Uncle!” The 
quickness with which they vanished over the 
fence was amazing. 

After all is said, I would here gladly pay a 
tribute to the memory of a great teacher, whose 
faults were those of the system then too prev- 


36 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


alent which he had adopted, but to whom for 
my education I owe much—more, I think, than 
to any one else. 

At Phillips Academy, in my time, there were 
no gymnastic facilities afforded the boys, but, 
in addition to our primitive football games, we 
had in the winters opportunity for muscular 
development in sawing our own wood and 
carrying it up into our rooms in the dormitories, 
to say nothing of shovelling ourselves out after 
the snow-storms. One boy, from some planta- 
tion in the South, had been sent up to Andover, 
and his parents had committed all his remit- 
tances of money to the watchful keeping of 
Uncle Sam. As the cold season came on the 
youth asked Uncle Sam where he could get 
some wood. Forthwith Uncle Sam provided 
him with a whole wood-pile. There it stood 
until at length the boy went and asked Uncle 
Sam who was to saw it. Uncle Sam provided 
him with a saw and saw-horse. The boy prob- 
ably had never done any manual labor of that 
kind. Then the fun began for the rest of us. 
His neighboring roomers demonstrated to him, 
on a few sticks, how the wood could be cut, and 
some of them were on hand to encourage him 
with much merriment in his first try at it. He 
did not become sufficiently trained to do the 
trick until the winter fairly set in, but he could 
kick a football higher and farther than almost 
any of us. . 


BOWDOIN COLLEGE 37 


I was sixteen years old when I entered college, 
in 1859, the youngest in my class but one, who 
had a few months the advantage of me. In 
order to keep up the record of my family I 
would have to graduate at the head of my class. 
Having had a better preparation than others, 
it was comparatively easy for me to keep up 
to the mark, especially in Greek and Latin, 
and at the same time to find much time for 
reading and the unguided study of literature. 
It seemed to me to be a part of my duty as a 
college man to make myself acquainted with 
the master works of English literature. Ma- 
caulay’s “Essay on Milton” was one of my 
early admirations. It was not until later that 
I learned to appreciate the simplicity of Lamb’s 
“Essays.” All the poets were a delight to me, 
Milton being always the great master. Shake- 
speare, of course, one had to acknowledge or 
count himself unworthy. Wordsworth’s ‘‘Ode 
on Intimations of Immortality” laid hold of 
and has never since lost its power over me. 
Later on Wordsworth became to me the inter- 
preter of many things in my own nature—feel- 
ing and spiritual experience. In my college 
days I made the acquaintance of the large folio 
edition of Jeremy Taylor’s works. -I am, per- 
haps, somewhat alone among students who have 
found delight in opening those volumes and 
skipping along through his sermons, as one 
might traverse uninviting lowlands, to find him- 


38 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


self suddenly lifted up to some commanding 
height, with a superb vision opened before him. 
I came to regard him in those early days as the 
gatherer of the spolia optima of English rhetoric. 
It was, perhaps, from that early delight in 
Taylor’s long and splendid sentences, such, for 
example, as his famous passage beginning, “‘So 
have I seen the lark,”’ that I came to delight in 
Ruskin’s descriptions; whose chapters on the 
mountains, and the sky, and many other pas- 
sages of word-painting to be found almost any- 
where in his books, I would read and reread. 
Our modern newspaper style of short sentences 
has its virtue of effective statement, like a rapid- 
fire gun at close range; but well ordered and 
more comprehensive sentences are often needed 
for viewing a subject all around and thinking 
of things as a whole. A literary automobile 
style may enable one to get quickly to a desired 
conclusion, but the old-fashioned coach climb- 
ing the hill and taking breathing-spells at the 
summits, afforded more opportunity for appre- 
ciating the scenery. Possibly a skilful use of 
the modernized and the former styles of com- 
position may combine the effectiveness and the 
suggestiveness of both. 

Having been born as a perhaps premature 
philosopher, I arrived too early in my educa- 
tion at the problems of modern philosophy. I 
had too little guidance in my first venturings, 
and when I came to that department of study 


BOWDOIN COLLEGE 39 


in my college curriculum I found myself already 
lost in a maze of questionings which my pro- 
fessor in that department seemed to shun as 
forbidden ground. At least he never entered 
it in his teaching, nor was he concerned to lead 
any one out of it. I had none of the teaching 
of experimental psychology such as is now 
given in our colleges generally. Consequently 
I very soon found myself struggling beyond 
my depth. I began with the Scotch philosophy 
and, after becoming somewhat familiar with 
the theories of Stuart and Reid concerning 
sense-perception, I came to Sir William Hamil- 
ton’s “‘Lectures,”’ which were then much in 
vogue. I read his essay on “The Uncondi- 
tioned,” which seemed to me to sweep away 
the very foundations of all knowledge, includ- 
ing any surety of my own existence. I struggled 
with his reasoning as a fish in a net, but I could 
not break loose. I found that the effort was 
becoming too absorbing, that my mind was 
becoming so engrossed with the problem that it 
was taking possession of me and driving out 
everything else. I became aware that to let 
one idea gain control of the mind was to walk 
dangerously near the verge of insanity, and that 
consequently I must get rid of it. So one 
morning, as I was returning from recitation 
and found myself wrestling helplessly again 
with that essay of Hamilton’s which was pur- 
suing me, I made up my mind that when I came 


40 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


to the next tree on the walk home I would quit 
thinking about it—but I didn’t. The attempt, 
however, succeeded a little better at the next 
tree, and the next. Reaching home with the 
problem of the reality of anything, including 
my own personal existence still following me, I 
took up the text-book for my next recitation, 
and lo! there it was again staring at me over 
the table. Then I made up my mind that 
vigorous effort was needed if I did not want to 
fall into the condition in which an upper class- 
man had just been left, of mental aberration 
from overstudy without needed sleep. So, 
guided by some friendly Socratic demon, I 
rushed over to the college gymnasium. For 
some two hours I kept at about every form of 
exercise I could find there until I was tired in 
every muscle, so physically used up that I did 
not care to count the trees or to think of any- 
thing on the way back home. The haunting 
problem had left me, and I was so convinced 
of the reality of my own existence, in the body 
at least, that in spite of Sir William Hamilton 
and all the pack of pursuing philosophers, I 
have never questioned my existence since. I 
solved it by exercise. 

Later on in my college course I took up and 
read, with more critical sense, Mansel’s ‘‘ Limits 
of Religious Thought,” which was an attempt 
to use Hamilton’s philosophy in the interest of 
theology independently of Spencer’s agnosti- 


BOWDOIN COLLEGE AI 


cism, although in partial agreement with his 
view of the relativity of all knowledge. Neither 
of these views satisfied me, and I clung fast to 
the belief (which I had settled in the gymna- 
sium) that at the bottom of personal conscious- 
ness of being there is assurance of something 
finally and fundamentally real. 

My graduating thesis on Commencement Day 
was on “The Absolute.” It was a presumptu- 
ous title. I have long lost my copy of it, which 
I personally should now like to read. I remem- 
ber well that while delivering it I looked down 
and saw fixed on me the eye of Professor Samuel 
Harris, whose ability as a teacher of philosophy 
was then becoming widely recognized. For a 
moment I was alarmed almost into forgetful- 
ness of my part, but, becoming oblivious of the 
rest of the commencement throng, I spoke to 
him as well as I could. Afterward I was re- 
assured and encouraged on my philosophic way 
by his kindly remarking to me that when he 
first saw the programme he expected a piece 
of folly, but that he was gratified and sustained 
my positions. He did me more good than he 
knew. 

In my senior year I took much pleasure in the 
required study not merely of Paley’s “Evi- 
dences,” but much more of Butler’s “Analogy,” 
under the skilful guidance of President Leonard 
Woods. We were required daily to master and 
to give the argument of a certain number of 


42 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


pages, and his comments in elucidation of the 
text or in correction of imperfect presentations 
of it by the class were helpful and stimulating. 
The effect of that study on my subsequent think- 
ing has been far-reaching; the thought was left 
germinating in my mind that some work of the 
same kind in the use of the accumulated mate- 
rials of modern science would be required in the 
interest of religious thought. Perhaps in that 
study of Butler’s “Analogy” lies the source and 
the sustaining motive of my increasing and life- 
long interest in modern science in connection 
with the study of theology. 

It was during the first years of my college life 
that the long controversy between freedom and 
slavery came to its inevitable consequence, 
and the Civil War broke out. The sacrificial 
preparation of the Free Soil campaigns had been 
made; the Republican party had come to its 
hour and entered upon its campaign in what 
Seward called the “irrepressible conflict.” He 
had been the favorite presidential candidate 
among many on account of his bold utterance 
of antislavery principles. Lincoln was an un- 
known candidate in the East; his nomination 
over Seward was my first political disappoint- 
ment, as in retrospect it has been my lasting 
lesson of hopeful acquiescence when political 
events have not turned out according to my 
wishes. As I look back upon it, Lincoln’s nomi- 
nation, instead of Seward’s, seems like a special 


BOWDOIN COLLEGE 43 


interposition of Providence—a strategic over- 
ruling of events by some higher power. 

The night when we waited for the returns of 
Lincoln’s election stands out in my memory as 
something separate from all others, in itself an 
incomparable hour. I remember it as [ do no 
other. As we waited for the returns, for a time 
the result hung in the balance. Connecticut, 
the vote of which was needed, was till late in 
the night a doubtful State. At last the news, 
too good to believe, came through—Lincoln was 
elected! Well do I remember my rushing home 
to tell my father of the victory, for which 
through long years of steadfast advocacy of 
antislavery principles he had waited, of the 
cause which, when standing almost alone, he 
had advocated with temperate speech but with 
fearless power. On one occasion he had faced 
mob violence. Yet little did we foresee what 
sacrificial years were to follow that victory. 

Two events, soon after, brought the North 
to a realization of the conflict before it. One 
was the firing upon Fort Sumter. The morning 
stands out in my memory apart by itself when, 
as I reached the steps of the college chapel for 
morning prayers, the news stared us in the face 
that Fort Sumter had been fired on. That gun 
awoke the North. During the preceding weeks 
the tone of the press had been compromising; 
the charge that the men of the North were 
nothing but doughfaces seemed to have some 


44 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


justification. Financial interests were on the 
side of compromise rather than courageous ac- 
tion, and in those last few months before Lin- 
coln assumed office, as I heard a political speaker 
of the time say, Buchanan had “‘sat like a mus- 
tard poultice on the body politic, drawing the 
rebellion to a head.” It was at that time of 
faint-heartedness in many places, after Lincoln’s 
nomination and shortly before his election, that 
during a speech which he made, as I have 
been told, in Meriden, Conn., some one in the 
audience interrupted him with the question: 
“Mr. Lincoln, if you are elected, how can you 
ever be inaugurated?” Lincoln, pointing at 
him, replied: ‘If there are enough men to elect 
me to the presidency, there will be men enough 
to put me there.”’ And there were. 

Southern men were looking upon Northerners 
as “‘doughfaces.”’ And against the timid com- 
promisers of the financial districts the outcry 
was hurled back: “Cotton is king!” But that 
morning, when the first gun was fired against 
Fort Sumter, in a moment, as in the twinkling 
of an eye, all was changed. The echoes of that 
gun, resounding throughout the North, awak- 
ened one response. The challenge was instantly 
answered, the financial interests of the country 
Jost not an hour in rallying to the support of 
the government. Wall Street was loyal. And 
Lincoln’s first call for troops for three months’ 
service found quick response. ‘ 


Qat 


BOWDOIN COLLEGE 4c 


The other event, soon following, which re- 
vealed the greatness of the impending conflict, 
was the loss of the battle of Bul! Run. That 
strengthened into an invincible purpose the de- 
termination of the North, making the heart of 
the people as heart of steel. From that day the 
preparation for the impending struggle really 
began. From that first defeat sprang the power 
which made final victory assured. 

The upper classes in our colleges began at 
once to be trained for military service. One 
after another of the students volunteered. 
While reading in my freshman year, in Motley’s 
“History of the Netherlands,” an account of a 
brave charge by a company of university stu- 
dents, I had wondered, as I read, whether the 
college students of my own day would be as 
gallant as those were in their struggle for free- 
dom. Little did I dream that before I should 
graduate some of my own class would have 
shown their courage on the battle-field, and that 
a year afterward I should find myself a soldier, 
tested under fire. And now again, after these 
many years of peace, the youth of our colleges 
have been called to the colors, and have done 
deeds as valiant as the bravest in the past. 

College athletics, in my time, were in an un- 
developed state. A standard test of physical 
ability was the removal or the silencing of the 
bell that called us to morning prayers. One 
year a venturesome sophomore climbed up by 


46 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


the lightning-rod to the bell-tower. Sometimes 
entrance was managed from inside. One of my 
classmates who was coming down the ladder 
after such an attempt was suddenly taken by 
surprise when he heard the voice of a tutor who 
had followed him, shouting up to him from 
below: “‘I am sorry to see you up there.” Not 
to be overdone in such regrets, he instantly an- 
swered: “I am sorry to see you, Mr. Tutor, 
down there.” The consummate bell exploit was 
to get possession of the bell itself and send it 
off in exchange for a bell from some other col- 
lege. Once the Bowdoin boys had received such 
a bell from Yale students in exchange for ours. 
Forming a procession they celebrated by march- 
ing around and around the campus ringing it 
and making the night air boisterous. They 
finally left the bell for the faculty to dispose of. 
It was boxed and left at the railway-station to 
be returned to Yale. Much to the astonishment 
of the faculty, the Yale bell was heard again that 
same night, pealing around the campus. The 
alert Bowdoin students had managed to get the 
bell out of its box, which, filled with stones, 
was sent back instead of the bell. 

We had, in my time, an unoccupied field 
where we could play at baseball, but which was 
not good enough for football. A small gym- 
nasium, however, had been provided, and a 
teacher appointed to take charge of it. It hap- 
pened that at one time, so it was said, he had 


BOWDOIN COLLEGE 47 


been a good prize-fighter. At all events, he was 
an expert boxer. I took several courses of box- 
ing-lessons of him in order to prepare myself 
better to teach in country schools during the 
long winter vacations. We were given our long 
vacation in the winter instead of the summer- 
time, in order that students might have oppor- 
tunity to earn money for their support in their 
endeavor to get a college education. This par- 
ticular instruction in boxing was commendable, 
not only as a good form of exercise, but also to 
enable the student schoolmaster to keep order 
in certain winter schools, especially along the 
seacoast. For it was not an unheard-of experi- 
ence that, during the first day or two after a 
new teacher’s appearance in such a school, the 
boys would start a disturbance to try him out. 
Unless he could demonstrate, then and there, 
his physical ability to rule, shortly afterward 
the village superintendent would visit his school 
and inform him that the school committee did 
not think he would do for that school. 
Though in the course of some little experi- 
ence at country-school teaching I was not called 
upon to meet that test, I had, however, such 
an examination as I have never had before or 
since. It was an old college squire who put 
me through it. He asked me first to locate a 
large number of geographical names, especially 
of out-of-the-way places, and then to solve some 
arithmetic or other puzzles, until I finally turned 


48 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


on him and told him that if he wanted to ex- 
amine me in the higher mathematics in order 
to teach that primary country school, I was 
ready to try it out with him. Then he laughed 
at me and told me he guessed [ would do. I 
had no further trouble from him; but I con- 
cluded that from his experience he thought 
that the best way to fit a college student to 
teach school among the plain people of his dis- 
trict was to take him down a bit. 

The surroundings of a village college like 
Bowdoin afforded various opportunities for stu- 
dent spirits to find exercise, and by occasionally 
performing as yet unheard-of exploits to show 
what they could do. I imagine no college has 
more traditions of such exploits than Bowdoin. 
In one of the college dormitories, consisting of 
two ends separated by a brick wall running 
through the middle, the sophomores were quar- 
tered in one end and the freshmen in the other. 
No better plan could have been devised to en- 
courage needed sophomore discipline of the 
freshmen and, if occasion demanded it, joint 
protection from faculty intrusions. The brick 
wall separating the ends rose two or three feet 
above the roof, affording convenient oppor- 
tunity for raids or for flight under concealment 
from one end to the other. So well were these 
conveniences used that the two ends had come 
to be called generally Sodom and Gomorrah. 
Frequent concerts were given at late hours from 


BOWDOIN COLLEGE 49 


that roof, with various instrumental accom- 
paniments, which an unappreciative president 
once characterized as making night hideous. 
Among the musical instruments was an immense 
tin horn which my class had received from an- 
tiquity. It was reported that only once had it 
been filled to its full sounding capacity by a 
student with lung-power enough to do it full 
justice. After trying it without much success 
as a musical instrument, the idea struck one of 
us to use it as the muzzle of an enormous syringe, 
holding a sufficient quantity of water for oppor- 
tune uses. To our advantage it so happened 
that the freshman recitation-room, on the lower 
floor, abutted the thin brick wall between it 
and the entrance to Sodom. It was an easy task 
to drill a hole through the wall just large enough 
to hold the nozzle of the improvised syringe. 
Straight down across the benches of the fresh- 
men stood the seat of their tutor. So, all prepa- 
rations having cautiously been made, both for 
action and escape, a sufficient number of buckets 
of water having been concealed in a near-by 
closet, and man-force enough enlisted to work 
the syringe, it was put into action with great 
success. The ardors of aspiring freshmen as 
well as of the instructor were suddenly quenched. 
Moreover, so well planned and expeditiously 
carried out was the scheme, that we saved the 
syringe for further necessary uses. 

Two of my classmen succeeded in a hazardous 


50 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


exploit which would have made a hard case for 
them had they been caught. At one end of 
the near-by railroad-station an engine was fre- 
quently left overnight. A watchman patrolled 
the station from one end to the other. The 
students wanted that engine’s bell. They man- 
aged to loosen and remove the bolts which held 
it, and finally the bell itself, working quietly 
during the minutes while the watchman was 
walking down to the other end. 

It may be added, however—if only as an 
illustrious confirmation of the saying ‘“‘All’s 
well that ends well”—that after their gradua- 
tion two of the most adventurous members in 
mischief of my class went out into a Western 
State together. One of them became a judge 
and the other the district attorney. It was re- 
ported of them that together they had cleaned 
out every rascal in their county. 

My father was the one member of the faculty 
who was apt to appear in the thick of it if any 
disturbance was going on in the campus, while 
others hung back on the outskirts. For this the 
students held him in high regard. They also 
found it expedient to set a guard near by his 
gate if anything was going on in which they 
did not wish to be interrupted. They rarely 
tried any tricks on him. Once, however, some 
members of the class, who had constitutional 
objections to the higher mathematics, during the 
night greased the blackboards of his recitation- 


BOWDOIN COLLEGE 51 


room. The professor entered the room, saw 
quickly what had been done, and, without say- 
ing a word, called up one of the class, took a 
piece of chalk, got down on the floor, marked 
out a difficult problem, and called on the stu- 
dent, and others after him, likewise to kneel 
on the floor and, chalk in hand, work out 
the problem. The rest of the class looked on 
with manifest appreciation. Nothing more was 
done about it, except to have the blackboards 
cleaned. 

The difference between the college education 
which was prevalent in those days and the 
present time is striking. It suggests comparative 
estimates of the losses as well as of the gains 
of the present period. The contrast is visibly 
presented if one looks over the courses of study 
in the catalogues of the earlier times, and then 
glances through the lists of studies, lectures, 
and optionals now offered in a university cata- 
logue or posted on the weekly bulletins. Even 
the titles of many of these would have been in- 
comprehensible to the earlier graduate, as a 
bill of fare in an unknown tongue to an inno- 
cent traveller. As I glance over the opportuni- 
ties for the acquisition of all kinds of knowledge 
now offered weekly to students at Yale, [am 
reminded of the boast of an Irishman who said: 
‘“‘Y have a brother who graduated at a college 
thirteen stories high; there’s an education for 
you.” 


52 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


There is, however, one advantage which the 
old-time graduates may plead; they had four 
years of study together in a common liberal 
education before being thrown out into the 
world to pursue their various individual voca- 
tions. They could speak at graduation the lan- 
guage which the people could understand. 
They had at least learned to box the main points 
of the compass of human knowledge. They had 
learned enough to enable them to choose what 
further fields of knowledge they would explore. 
They also may have been taught enough to 
enable them to listen when from any quarter 
some one who had become a specialist might 
tell them of what he was finding out, and to 
ask intelligent questions, as well as to seek to 
assimilate in their own pursuits what any one 
might bring them from his researches. Certainly 
the simpler, but in its way thorough, education 
of those earlier times did not result in a univer- 
sity babel of many tongues. 

On the other hand, the extension of scientific 
investigations in many directions, the com- 
plexity of human problems, the allurements to 
lifelong pursuit of some chosen line of research— 
in short, the new world presented by the present- 
day university bulletin—mark the vast gain of 
intellectual acquisitions which are to be in- 
cluded among the opportunities of a college 
education. The contrast, however, between 
then and now is well to note; for what was un- 


BOWDOIN COLLEGE 53 


questionably most excellent in the college train- 
ing of old should be so far as possible conserved 
in the more diversified university opportuni- 
ties of these days. A liberal education must still 
be rooted, at least, in common educational soil. 
Specialties should not, from the ground up, be 
cultivated as a hothouse growth, each by itself. 
The earlier years at college should give to all 
students acquaintance with one another in 
some elements of universal education, such as 
language, literature, scientific methods. A 
common freshman year may prove the salva- 
tion of modern liberal education amid the at- 
tractions of specialties and the haste of many 
to pursue them. A man cannot live by bread 
alone—not even his chosen specialty. 

While the founders of our New England col- 
leges had primarily in mind the desire to pro- 
vide a good education for the ministry, and the 
atmosphere of the colleges was religious, the 
founders and faculties had in view also the 
need of a college education for other professions 
and for the service of the people. They were 
schools of good citizenship as well as of primary 
training for a religious and educated ministry. 
An illustration of this desire to impart a liberal 
education is the advice given, when I was in 
college, by President Woods of Bowdoin to a 
student who had neglected his studies to go 
around among neighboring schoolhouses and 
give talks on temperance, or hold revivalist 


54 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


meetings wherever he might find opportunity. 
The student advanced such activities as his ex- 
cuse for neglecting his studies. The president 
answered: “‘Assuredly if you can have but one, 
Mr. , it would be well to have religion; but 
might it not be better for you to have a little 
religion and a little knowledge ?” 

The intention of the founders of the New Eng- 
land colleges, as well as the influences which, in 
my days, pervaded our colleges, was worthie 
expressed in the definition of character given 
by Judge Phillips in the constitution of Phillips 
Academy: “Let it not be forgotten that good- 
ness without knowledge, as it concerns others, 
is weak and feeble, and that knowledge with- 
out goodness is dangerous; but that both 
united form the strongest characters and lay 
the surest foundations of usefulness to man- 


kind.” 





CHAPTER III 
ARMY LIFE 


HORTLY after my graduation, in the fall 
of 1863, I had obtained a position in the 
Naval Academy, then at Newport, R. L., 

as a librarian and assistant teacher in mathe- 
matics, the department of which my uncle, 
Professor John Coffin, was the head. The old 
frigate Constitution had been fitted up for the 
departmental offices, while the temporary bar- 
racks on the adjacent island furnished the 
recitation-rooms. This introduction into naval 
circles, and acquaintance with the methods of 
training cadets was a very interesting experi- 
ence. As a consequence of it I have retained ever 
since an interest in naval affairs. The task of 
teaching was relieved of some of its difficulties 
by the fact that the instructor had nothing 
whatever to do with the administration of dis- 
cipline, his duty being fulfilled simply by making 
reports to the officer in charge of his class and 
its discipline. Professor Coffin was a thorough 
teacher and a mathematician who had been 
much engaged in the production of the nau- 
tical almanac, an unassuming and genial man, 
while he was a thorough disciplinarian. He had 
acquired in his experience a most comprehen- 
sive contempt for politicians, and he early im- 
55 


s6 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


bued me with much of his opinion of them and 
all their ways. The year spent in his home and 
charming family was a delightful one. They 
lived close to the water, and many an afternoon 
or evening I found myself rowing or sailing 
about Newport harbor. 

As I had learned to love the water from my 
boyhood’s knowledge of Casco Bay, I could ap- 
preciate the fun of it when one windy morning 
a boat sped out from one of the war-vessels 
sailed by an officer, who doubtless could have 
commanded a war-ship, but who had not learned 
the sudden pranks of a Rhode Island catboat, 
for he let his sail suddenly jibe, upsetting the 
boat and plunging him and his companion into 
the water. A boat, however, speedily sped out 
from a near-by ship before I could have the 
pleasure of rescuing him. I recall also the di- 
lemma from which a distinguished admiral was 
obliged to extricate himself in an address which 
he was making to a graduating class. He had 
begun a carefully memorized speech, with which 
he was getting along eloquently, with well- 
rounded periods befitting the dignity of the 
occasion, when suddenly his memorized speech 
seemed to vanish from him and he stopped 
short, embarrassing both his audience and him- 
self. But he soon proved master of the occa- 
sion; for suddenly he broke out into these 
words: “Boys, don’t swear!” And then, hav- 
ing in that moment of suspense cast away his 


ARMY LIFE 57 


anchorage on his preparation, he went on in 
forcible language, such as without swearing he 
might have used on the quarter-deck, to give 
those cadets more good advice than I have ever 
heard in any commencement oratory. I think 
all his listeners were thankful that his memory 
had failed him, and that his naval ability to 
meet any emergency had saved the day. 

The war was going on; officers were in de- 
mand. I had a brother, an officer in Rosecrans’s 
army, who had been taken captive at Chatta- 
nooga. How could I loiter at home, even in the 
Naval Academy, while he was in Libby Prison ? 
I never consciously decided that question; I 
simply found myself enlisted for the rest of the 
war and spending day and night in the re- 
cruiting service. With the help of the governor 
of Maine I had succeeded in raising a sufficient 
part of a new company to receive from him a 
commission as first lieutenant. We were sent 
to the front hastily, where I found myself in 
the Sixteenth Maine Regiment in the Fifth 
Army Corps, stationed before Petersburg. 

Our new company had hardly been mustered 
in and a few days only afforded it for learning 
how to execute the simplest army tactics, before 
we found ourselves at the front; a band of de- 
cidedly fresh reinforcements in a regiment of 
veterans whose flag bore the names of many 
battles in which it had been engaged. It was 
a trying situation for a young officer to he 


58 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


placed in among veterans; but they welcomed 
us and treated me with most kindly considera- 
tion and helpfulness. Of course it was com- 
paratively easy for a college graduate to com- 
mit to memory any required amount of the 
book of tactics, but experience in the necessi- 
ties of life in camp and on the field was a very 
different thing. It was but a few days after we 
had been incorporated in the regiment that I 
found myself taking my turn in command of 
our regimental detail on the picket-line. 

The regiment to which my company was as- 
signed was then camped at Fort Wadsworth, 
on the Weldon Railroad, south of Petersburg. 
Our picket-line was thrown out some distance 
in advance, the outpost being at one of the 
chimneys of a house which had been burnt 
down while the Confederate vedette was be- 
hind the chimney on the other end. As show- 
ing how the elaborate use of wire netting in the 
last war has been evolved from small beginnings, 
it is interesting to note that a few yards in 
front of our fort a network of wire, about a 
foot high, had been spread out with a criss- 
cross narrow path running through it, for the 
purpose of delaying any attacking party long 
enough for us to reload our guns and give them 
another volley. Its chief effect in practice, 
however, was occasionally to trip up some off- 
cer returning at night from picket duty and 
to evoke a rapid fire of profanity. 


ARMY LIFE 59 


We had been at the front but a few weeks 
when I was put in command of a company with 
the rank of acting captain. This was more re- 
sponsibility than I had expected to take upon 
myself so soon after enlistment, and with hardly 
any drill at the front. Shortly after that we 
were ordered to move in light marching order. 
We had little idea, at first, as to where we were 
going or what might be expected of us; but we 
soon found ourselves on the march toward the 
Weldon Railroad. It proved to be a raid by 
the Fifth Corps of some forty miles, for the 
purpose of tearing up a large portion of the 
railroad over which supplies were being trans- 
ported to Richmond. It was wintry weather. 
We had nothing but the blankets and rations 
which we could carry on our backs for four 
days of marching and exposure. It was a weird 
spectacle when, in the evening, we reached the 
railroad and went to work at once to tear up 
the rails with all possible speed. The road ran 
on a straight line through the woods. As far as 
we could see our corps was stretched along it, 
ripping up the rails and then putting them 
across piles of blazing sleepers so as to render 
them useless. As I looked down the line I could 
see glimpses of the guns of the soldiers among 
the fires, as the work of destruction went rap- 
idly on. The men took delight in heating rails 
red-hot and bending them into the form of a 
Maltese cross, which was our corps emblem, 


60 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


and leaving them thus as our sign to the enemy. 
It was cold camping in the Virginia mud with 
nothing but the few blankets which we had 
been able to carry on our shoulders, especially 
on the last night, when the ground froze hard. 

On the last day of this raid Lee sent a force 
to overtake us. As it happened, on the march 
back that day to our camp, our division was the 
rear of our corps, our brigade the rear end of the 
division, my regiment at the rear of the brigade, 
and my company the tail-end of the regiment. 
Reb cavalry was at our heels, so one had to 
keep up in the rapid march unless he wanted 
to fall back into a rebel prison. But we finished 
our march with only one slight skirmish at our 
rear. It was a raid that tried the endurance of 
old soldiers. Quite a number of my men went 
on the sick list after it; but with the exception 
of blistered feet, occasioned by ill-fitting shoes, 
I came through hale and hearty and ready for 
any duty. I was particularly glad of it since, 
when I first reached the regiment, I was some- 
what pale and thin from my work of recruiting. 
I had heard some of the men saying: “‘ What has 
that pale-faced lieutenant come out here for? 
We will send him home in a box in six weeks.” 
I had spotted a veteran whom I overheard say- 
ing that, and noticing him laboring on the last 
day’s march, I asked him if he did not want me 
to carry his musket a piece for him! I have 
never forgotten the kindness of Lieutenant- 


ARMY LIFE | we OI 


Colonel Farnham, who a mile or two before we 
reached camp, asked me if I would not ride his 
horse for a while as he was tired of riding and 
wanted to walk a bit. 

My first experience of a possible action oc- 
curred on this last day, when some of our caval- 
rymen were driven into our regiment, pursued 
by the reb cavalry. I had at once to form our 
company to the rear, in line with the company 
next in front of me, before even the colonel 
could form the rest of the regiment on our com- 
panies. I gained thereby more confidence in 
myself, as it seemed to me the whole book of 
tactics came into my head and that I could 
carry out any kind of an order that might be 
given me. It was something like the experience 
I had had in academic examinations, when in 
answer to sharp questioning memory seemed to 
act with gratifying spontaneity and whatever 
I knew was startled out of the subconscious for 
my use. 

In the early part of February General Meade 
made an attack in force at the extreme left of 
our line in an effort to approach nearer to the 
Southside Railroad, Lee’s main source of sup- 
plies, and by extending our own line to weaken 
his defensive force all along his front. I take 
from my note-book the following extracts: 

“Feb. sth. I received orders early this morn- 
ing to have my company fall in immediately. 
We are on the march, nobody knows where or 


62 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS , 


why. I hope the Southside R.R. is our destina- 
tion, but cannot tell. Sharp cannonading is 
going on up the line. 

“Feb. 6. Fell back a few miles this morning 
and encamped in an open field. Advanced in 
the afternoon upon the enemy. Our regiment 
charged and drove the Johnnies from their first 
_ line. We were flanked and compelled to fall 
back. We went in four times under a severe 
musketry fire. Enemy’s artillery fire went over 
our heads. Were driven back about dark by a 
charge of the enemy. Got separated from regi- 
ment, gathered up scattered men, and regiment 
reformed in the night. Then followed a general 
shaking of hands among those of us who were 
left. 

“Feb. 7. Went down the works about half a 
mile, filed into the woods and formed then in 
line of battle. A Mass. Regiment deployed as 
skirmishers in our party started up the enemy, 
as soon as we began to advance after forming. 
We advanced in support of our skirmishers, 
driving the enemy into their works. Our whole 
regiment then deployed as skirmishers and the 
enemy opened on us with grape-shot.... In 
the cold sleet we stood skirmishing all day. 
General Baxter said it was the hardest day’s 
service he had seen. At dusk we charged as 
skirmishers in front of a line of battle, which 
after a charge was driven back. We waited for 
over an hour before it was possible on the skir- 


ARMY LIFE 63 


mish-line to start any fires. I lay down half- 
frozen behind a burning log from which a 
sharpshooter clipped off a piece of bark. I was 
awakened by some men who were burying a 
man who had just been shot at one of the fires. 
About one o’clock we were ordered to fall back 
as quietly as possible.” 

On February 10 we returned to camp. In a 
letter to my father, which he kept, I find these 
words: 

“‘T have been through a baptism of fire. I 
led my men several times in the charge and 
also rallied them, when we were flanked on both 
sides and could not hold ground which we had 
captured. I felt perfectly cool and self-possessed 
in action. I think I have done my whole duty. 
Once our colonel turned to me, saying: “I have 
a great mind to go in again just as we are.’ | 
replied: ‘I will follow where you lead.’ When he 
said that to me, and I could so answer it, it was 
one of two proudest moments of my life—when 
I felt, that is, that I had done all that is in a 
man to be and to do. But it was not I, it was 
the thought of my mother that made me brave 
as the word ‘Forward’ came ringing down the 
line.” This extract from my letter home I in- 
clude as a tribute to her memory. 

From some letters written home, and dated 
from “Camp in the Field,” and also from a 
pocket-book note-book, written in pencil, I 
make the following extracts, as they may be 


64 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


of some interest in showing what army life 
was at that time. Under date of December 11, 
shortly after our return from the raid on the 
Weldon Railroad, I find this: 

“We are at work building huts, but it is by 
no means certain that we shall ever enjoy them. 
Whether Grant makes any new move we cannot 
guess but he is generally doing something, 
while we possess our souls in patience not know- 
ing what a day may bring forth. To-night I am 
enjoying an open fire at one end of my tent 
while I am sitting on a couch made of poles, 
over which I have spread my blankets, and I am 
writing on a table made of an old hardtack 
box, mounted on four poles. Yet my tent seems 
comfortable as the most cosey parlor, after all 
the hardships which we have undergone, and a 
week spent out in the open air.” 

In several of these letters I find allusions to 
the patience required of the troops while wait- 
ing in camp during the rains and cold of mid- 
winter, when even drilling had often to be 
omitted. I wrote: 

“Jan. 8. If only we could march out and 
fight it through and then go home, the troops 
would be happy as could be; but these long 
months of inactivity try their patience and fill 
up the hospitals. I myself am in the best of 
health, and exposure only seems to toughen me. 
The army is a great place to develop indepen- 
dence and decision of character. I am getting 


ARMY LIFE 6s 


here a discipline such as I have never received 
before.” 

‘March 11. This is a curious climate, it 
rains as easily as a child cries. The army at 
present is mud-bound.” 

In another letter describing the conditions of 
camp life while waiting for the springtime to 
make an advance possible, I find that I wrote: 
“T had expected all this when I entered in the 
service, and it is beyond the power of any of 
these circumstances to make me feel blue.” 

Our regiment had been transferred from Fort 
Wadsworth and stationed on the extreme end of 
our line on the left flank. I wrote this descrip- 
tion of our picket service there: 

“Jan. sth. Our present line of pickets is over 
two miles from camp, and as we have been 
having a drenching rain the mud was almost 
bottomless. I was in command of the reserve 
of about seventy men for the next twenty-four 
hours. My orders were to be anywhere along 
the line that I saw fit. Now as there were several 
houses just inside our vedettes on the right of 
the line, and also as the right was the most ex- 
posed part of the line, I found it expedient to 
visit that flank of it often. Entered one; I was 
invited into a large and quite well-furnished 
room. There were engravings hung on the 
walls, and books lying on a table. A comfort- 
able feeling of home and civilized life came over 
me as I sat down in a rocking-chair in front of 


66 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


a blazing fire. This was once a fine plantation 
and thirty field hands formerly kept it under 
cultivation. ‘We had everything that we could 
wish, said one of the women to me, ‘but the 
outhouses are all empty now, and the huts of 
the slaves deserted, while ploughs and a few 
other utensils are lying unused in the open air.’” 

On March 11, 1865, I thus wrote my sister: 

““I have very unexpectedly been detailed to 
what is called ‘a soft job,’ that of Acting Regi- 
mental Quartermaster. This is hardly what I 
came out for, but if it so happens that I am not 
ordered up to the front in case of a fight, I sup- 
pose that I have no cause to complain. I shall 
have considerable business to do, but shall have 
a horse to ride, shall be much more my own 
master, and most of the time shall be out of 
danger. I told Col. Tilden that I should be glad 
enough to act as Quartermaster while we were 
living in camp, but I should feel cheap to see 
the Regiment going out to a fight while I had 
to stay in the rear, that I thought other officers 
who had been longer in the service than I de- 
served that promotion, and that I wanted to 
go with my company, to whom I had become 
devoted, in the coming campaign. But he re- 
plied, ‘You are obeying orders.’” 

It so happened that the regiment suffered 
hardly any loss in the following campaign, while 
I had the advantage of seeing a good deal that 
was going on both in front and rear. In my 


ARMY LIFE 67 


faded diary, among accounts of regimental sup- 
plies issued, I find scattered notes of my ex- 
perience in that last great campaign which 
resulted in Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Gen- 
eral Grant’s ‘‘Memoirs” give a clear and com- 
plete account of that crowning achievement of 
the Army of the Potomac. When his memorable 
marching orders were issued and read to every 
regiment, the men hailed them with delight and 
with unbounded confidence that, however hard 
the fighting might be, victory under such gen- 
eralship was certain. The weather had cleared 
for a few days; the roads were passable when 
we moved out. But the rains descended again, 
and just before the victory at Five Forks I 
heard some passing staff-officers saying that 
they thought the ““Old Man” would have to go 
back to camp. But Warren’s corps, struggling 
through the muddy roads and throwing up 
corduroy over swollen streams, reached Sheri- 
dan in time at last to enable him to win de- 
cisively at Five Forks. 

Immediately after the battle of Five Forks 
had been won by General Sheridan, other troops 
had carried the rebel line before Petersburg. 
Our division supply-train happened to be halted 
just behind General Park’s line when he carried 
the rebel works in his front after a heavy can- 
nonading and a quick charge. I had opportunity 
to ride over a portion of the line shortly after- 
ward, when the dead were still lying where they 


68 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


had fallen unburied and the rebel camps were 
left just as they were before the action. I was 
impressed with the engineering of the works, the 
way the line was covered with the means of 
cross-fring. It seemed to me that if it had been 
thoroughly manned it could have been carried 
only with a frightful loss. The persistent length- 
ening of our own lines by General Grant during 
the winter had compelled Lee to stretch out his 
fortifications too far for them to be effectually 
manned at every point, although he had built 
a corduroy road all along the way behind him 
and could quickly transfer troops along it, as 
up to the last he had done whenever an im- 
pending attack seemed to require it. 

The ludicrous and the tragic sometimes go 
together in a soldier’s experience, sometimes 
enough to make one laugh even on a battle-field. 
One such experience I had as I rode across 
Lee’s captured line immediately after this ac- 
tion. A little way behind his fortifications there 
stood a small house. As I came up to it I saw 
an old woman standing in the door. Somewhat 
surprised, I asked her: “‘Where were you when 
all this cannonading was going on?” She said: 
“*T was hiding down in the cellar, and a cannon- 
ball came through the roof and upset a right 
smart heap of crockery.” I left her mourning 
for her crockery. 

Grant showed that eventful morning his mil- 
itary sagacity. Instead of sending his troops 


ARMY LIFE 69 


to the rear of Petersburg, where, it was said, 
Meade thought Lee might seek his line of re- 
treat and where, it was reported, he had ex- 
tensive works, Grant, immediately after the 
line in front of Petersburg was carried, sent 
his forces off toward the line of retreat which 
Lee actually took toward Appomattox. Our 
corps, which at the time Petersburg was taken 
were executing a flanking movement on the 
left, were countermarched in their tracks, and 
toward night were some twenty miles away in 
pursuit of Lee’s troops. The men, exultant over 
their victory and eager to make an end of it 
all, willingly made forced marches. It was slow 
work during the ensuing days to push the sup- 
ply-trains along roads flooded by the rains. At 
times the wagons seemed almost hopelessly 
stalled. But little by little, day and night, they 
were dragged and pushed along. We almost 
lined the roads with exhausted mules. We did 
not stop to camp but got snatches of sleep 
while waiting for portions of the trains ahead 
of us to dig themselves out and move along. 
This all was for me a great experience and 
formed a glorious background of memory for 
the remainder of my days. 

I recall a few episodes from memoranda in 
my note-book, hurriedly made along the march. 

On Friday, April 7, I saw some 2,500 pris- 
oners just captured and ten captured guns. | 
got a pass within their guards and entered into 


70 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


conversation with several of them. One of 
them told me that Lee had massed a large force 
on his right in February with the intention of 
attacking our left, but our fight at Dabney’s 
Mills spoiled his plans. “He had an angle in his 
works just behind that sawdust mill on which 
our regiment received so severe a cross-fire.” 
Grant’s famous saying that the Confederates 
had robbed the cradle and the grave for their 
armies was confirmed, as I noticed among those 
prisoners both gray-haired men and boys under 
age. The story was told that once Lee, riding 
along, saw by the roadside a boy soldier hardly 
big enough to carry a musket, crying on the 
bank. Lee said to him, “Do not be a baby,” 
and the boy replied, “‘I wish I was a baby, and 
a gal baby too.” 

Saturday, April 8, a party of quartermas- 
ters, myself among them, started out for the 
front to issue shoes. We rode some thirty miles 
through a beautiful country. Far off on the 
west the Blue Ridge, with its shadowy moun- 
tains, seemed to unite earth and heaven. I 
never enjoyed a ride more in my life. Toward 
evening we turned aside from the road and slept 
in a hay-mound, rather hungry as we had had 
no supper. The memory of that night’s warm 
and comfortable sleep, where, having dug a hole 
in the stack, we crawled in, has remained hap- 
pily with me ever since. For years afterward, 
whenever I saw on the meadows a hay or straw 


ARMY LIFE 71 


stack, that night would come vividly back to 
me. For a week before we had hardly been out 
of the saddle for more than an hour or two at 
a time, dozing beside our horses while the wagons 
ahead of ours were struggling a little ways ahead 
through the mud, and then pushing ours ahead 
little by little at a time. My horse would lie 
down in the mud about as soon as I was off, 
and I would use his back for a pillow. 

“The next morning,” so I find in the entry 
in my diary, “‘we mounted and at dark reached 
the regiment.” I had spurred my almost ex- 
hausted horse on as fast as I could, as we heard 
some firing ahead, and we naturally wanted to 
be in and see the last charge of the troops at 
the front. But just as we reached the regiment, 
the reb troops, who had resisted some of our 
cavalry on the edge of a wood, hurriedly with- 
drew as our infantry charged. A flag of truce 
was sent down our lines. The Army of the Po- 
tomac had fought its last fight. Colonel Tilden, 
who rarely showed emotion, greeted me as I 
dismounted with tears in his eyes, saying, “‘ For 
three long years I have waited for this hour.” 
He told me to go a little space beyond to the 
top of the ridge and I could see what was left 
of Lee’s army, which, tired though I was, I did. 

Our regiment was fortunate in having reached 
the end of its march a little distance only from 
the spot where Grant met Lee and peace was 
made. 


72 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


The rumor had somehow been started and 
spread along our line that Lee had surrendered 
and given up his sword under an apple-tree in 
the orchard of the house where actually they 
had met. So, hearing this, I had gone over to 
get a souvenir from that tree. But the men 
had got there before me. I found the small 
trunk of the tree already cut to pieces, and | 
had to get a piece from near the root. This 
story of the apple-tree at Appomattox is worth 
noticing, for it illustrates how a tradition may 
spring up even in this age of news publicity, 
and continue to be believed even in the life- 
time of eye-witnesses of the actual facts. Other 
parts of the same newspaper article, in which 
it was first told, were quite accurate. This in- 
stance, in our own day, shows how little reli- 
ance may be placed, especially by controversial 
church historians, upon early traditions con- 
cerning the origins of church institutions, un- 
less these find confirmation from variant sources. 

An interesting event, quite unusual in mili- 
tary experience, happened to me on our way 
back from Appomattox. We had captured, in 
the pursuit of Lee, the whole student body of 
a young ladies’ boarding-school, and had kept 
them under safeguard while the troops were 
passing by. On the return I received orders to 
take them in our supply-wagons back to their 
homes in Richmond. Accordingly, I signed a 
receipt to the officer who delivered them to my 


ARMY LIFE 73 


charge, for a number of young ladies; and, put- 
ting them into our wagons, started one bright 
morning for Richmond. The only seats we 
could well provide for them were several cap- 
tured cannon which we had been loaded with 
on our return. Of course I had to apologize for 
mounting them on guns we had taken from 
the Confederates. These guns bore the marks 
of English manufacture, and apparently quite 
recently had been run through the blockade for 
use against us. I was at that moment naturally 
indignant over that evidence of English aid to 
the Confederacy. When the evening came we 
found a small house by the wayside where we 
could deposit our load of girls for the night; 
but wishing to show them how “Yanks” could 
be gentlemen, we were at some loss as to what 
we could provide for them to eat. Our light 
camp cooking-outfit we had been obliged to 
throw away, as we reduced the load as much as 
possible on the pursuit, and our stores were re- 
duced to hard bread and coffee. Our dilemma 
was partially alleviated by my sergeant, whom 
I had sent out foraging, who came back waving 
triumphantly something over his head, to in- 
form me that he had struck a can of peaches. 
In an interesting conversation with one of the 
most intelligent of these girls, I asked about her 
school and studies. I drew out from among her 
remarks about the North the information that 
her school-books were all published in Boston. 


74 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


On our arrival the next afternoon in Rich- 
mond, according to my orders I delivered the 
goods to the quartermaster’s headquarters 
there, receiving a receipt for so many girls. He 
was to see them safely escorted to their homes. 

Sherman’s army, having finished its march 
to the sea, was approaching Washington to join 
the Army of the Potomac in the final scene of 
the war. It became something of a race which 
of our corps should reach Washington first; and 
we made a forced march to do so. The arrival 
of these hosts at the capital proved a strain on 
the quartermaster’s department, as the pro- 
visions for our army were largely at Norfolk. 
For a day or two we were put on half rations 
till the stores from there could be brought up. 
Then came the grand review—such as never 
before or since has been witnessed. It was the 
privilege of a lifetime to have seen it and to 
have been in it. It required two days for the 
troops to pass by. The first day, the Army of 
the Potomac, starting from the Capitol, marched 
down the avenue past the reviewing-stand by 
the White House, their torn battle-flags flying, 
with their generals, staff-officers, and formations 
of veterans who were left from many a bat- 
tle-field, through an avenue thronged from side- 
walk to roofs, a mass of flags and color, midst 
cheers instead of the noise of battle. The next 
day Sherman’s army passed by the reviewing 
stand; but Lincoln—the soldiers’ Lincoln—was 


ARMY LIFE E 


not there. Might the God of Hosts have per- 
mitted him in the spirit to have witnessed that 
last triumphal march, as the final reward of his 
sacrifice, would there have been also, around 
him, that other host of those who had fought 
the good fight and given their lives for their 
country—they who were not in the closed ranks 
of their comrades that triumphal day? We 
shall know hereafter. 

Fortunately our regiment was one of the 
first sent homeward to be mustered out, and 
consequently it was permitted us to receive all 
along the way home the earliest spontaneous 
exultation of the people. Flags carried by men 
and women and children without number waved 
us homeward at the crossroads all along—and 
last and best of all—home! 


CHAPTER IV 
ANDOVER SEMINARY 


HEN I was mustered out from the 
army I went directly into Andover 
Seminary. It was certainly a sudden 

transition from Appomattox Court House, 
where I had heard the last guns fired by the 
Army of the Potomac, to the quiet streets and 
a student’s room at Andover. I desired to join 
the junior class there, although they were then 
in the last term of the first year’s required 
studies. But while waiting, immediately after 
my graduation from college, for an appointment 
in the Naval Academy, I had improved a few 
weeks by studying Hebrew at the Bangor Theo- 
logical Seminary as a preliminary to my future 
preparation for the ministry. On entering the 
army I had carried a Hebrew grammar with 
me, and occasionally looked into it at idle hours 
in camp as a diversion. When I applied for ad- 
mission to the junior class I had to appear for 
examination before Professor Barrows, who 
then occupied the chair of Hebrew. I knew his 
great interest in the soldiers. Indeed, he had 
once visited the army before Petersburg. I 
had heard it related of him that, as he was rid- 
ing along our lines on what he called Grant’s 
railroad, an officer leaned over his shoulder, as 
76 


ANDOVER SEMINARY 77 


he was reading a small book unlike any one on 
military tactics and printed in curious char- 
acters, and asked him what he was reading. 
“The best book in the world to fight on,”’ re- 
plied the professor, “‘David’s Psalms.” Re- 
membering this, and trusting my memory of 
the version of the first chapter of Genesis and 
of what I had been told was one of his favorite 
Psalms, I appeared for the required examina- 
tion. So far I succeeded with sufficient varia- 
tions from the original for appearances’ sake, 
when he proceeded to ask me a number of ques- 
tions. After a few moments the professor leaned 
back and said: “I see that you must, as you 
said, at some time have studied Hebrew a little, 
because I perceived, when I asked you a ques- 
tion, that you seemed to have some glimmering 
of an idea of the answer. You can enter the 
class and try.” It was not difficult to catch up 
sufficiently, at least, to pass into the further 
study of Hebrew literature. 

The most notable professors in my time were 
Professor Park in systematic theology, and 
Professor Phelps in homiletics. To Professor 
Phelps I owe much. His own sermons in the 
Andover pulpit, to which I listened when a 
boy at Phillips Academy, and afterward as a 
student in the seminary, had a quickening and 
spiritual influence which I have remembered 
gratefully ever since. His lectures were models 
of pure English, to which, whatever their sub- 


78 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS | 


ject, it was always a pleasure to listen. Cheap 
adaptations of a preacher’s methods for effect on 
common people, and vulgarities of speech in 
the pulpit, sometimes called forth his withering 
sarcasm. On the other hand, he would insist on 
the necessity of the preacher’s familiarizing 
himself with the language and the thinking of 
the people among whom he must minister. He 
recognized what he characterized as the spoken 
but unwritten literature of the people. As I 
take down his two published volumes, one on 
the ““Theory of Preaching” and the other on 
““Men and Books,” they seem to me to bring 
out the vital principles of effective preaching, 
as well as to embody counsels of wisdom unex- 
celled in any of the recent lectures on preach- 
ing. It would be well if they were still used in 
the homiletic teaching of our theological schools. 
Many passages in them are good reading for 
preachers on present-day social problems. I 
recall also one scathing rebuke which he made 
of one of those preachers who play upon the 
feelings of their hearers to call forth “the cheap 
tribute of tears.” 

It was due to Professor Tucker, his successor, 
that a distinct sociological course of lectures 
was later introduced in the theological instruc- 
tion of Andover Seminary. 

Professor Park was generally regarded as a 
great pulpit orator, and it was customary at 
Andover to regard a sermon from him as an 


ANDOVER SEMINARY 79 


event. His lectures were like an exercise in 
theological gymnastics, and never dull. Very 
soon, among a few of us, his dialectics aroused 
a spirit of criticism. He was a master of dialec- 
tical skill, not only in presenting his own propo- 
sitions, but also in quick and often apparently 
crushing reply when we ventured objections. 
One of his favorite methods with us was to 
maintain that we agreed with him but did not 
know how to express ourselves. He seemed to 
me at times to resemble one of the Greek soph- 
ists, but we were not sufficient adepts in the 
Socratic method to put him to confusion. 
Nevertheless, the minds of some of us were not 
satisfied with his method of reasoning. It 
seemed to us that he shaped Edwards to con- 
form to his system of New England theology 
rather than leading us to understand Edwards’ 
deeper spiritual thinking. We often thought 
that he first insinuated his conclusion into his 
definitions, and then, with triumphant logic, 
deduced them from his definitions. To those 
of the class, however, who were satisfied with 
being sent out equipped with a complete system 
of theology and biblical proof-texts to match, 
for which a net had been dragged through the 
whole Bible, his lectures were all that could be 
desired; they were furnished with a system of 
theology ready made, from which sermons could 
be drawn without any too anxious thought for 
the morrow on which they would have to preach. 


80 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


It seemed to be Professor Park’s ambition to 
become the final exponent of the New England 
theology. As a formal system it may almost be 
said that he did finish it—and it was buried 
with him. His lectures have never been pub- 
lished. His life of Edwards, upon which he was 
said to have been engaged, was never com- 
pleted, and the pupils who once went forth as 
his favorite disciples have now almost all been 
gathered to their fathers. But Edwards’ intel- 
lectual honesty, his profound searching for 
truth, abide in our theological schools. 

I suppose that it was my early and instinctive 
longing to know what is real that led me at 
first to criticise and then to abandon Professor 
Park’s complete system of theological defini- 
tions and deductions. As a consequence, I 
found myself going back to Augustine in his 
searching of truth, and to Plato in his ultimate 
ideas. The mystics attracted me, and Neo- 
Platonism opened interesting though disappoint- 
ing inquiries. But the prevalent New England 
theology, although in many of its fundamental 
ideas appearing to me to be valid, as a whole 
seemed to me, especially as taught by Pro- 
fessor Park, to be an orthodox rationalism; 
and rationalism of any kind did not satisfy 
me. My brother Egbert’s lectures on the ante- 
Nicene development of the doctrine of the 
Trinity led me into a truer conception of the 
possible development of theology—a living, ex- 


ANDOVER SEMINARY 81 


panding development—which has since then 
become more scientifically apprehended in my 
own thinking. 

The Nicene Creed is the high-water mark of 
Greek thinking concerning the person of Christ 
and the triune nature of God. It was a partial 
reconciliation of variant conceptions of the 
faith of the church in the divine person of 
Christ and the triune nature of God. The 
Apostle Paul’s declaration to Timothy of his 
faith is much simpler, beginning with the words, 
“Great is the mystery of godliness” (I Tim. 
3:16), and in its simplicity it is far better 
adapted as a creedal confession for the worship 
of the people. I wonder whether St. Paul, with 
his probably not extensive knowledge of Greek 
philosophic speculations, had he heard the 
Nicene Creed repeated, could have compre- 
hended very clearly its distinctions, and might 
not have been plunged into some speculative 
thinking rather than become lifted up in ado- 
ration. Nevertheless, the Nicene Creed, stud- 
ied historically and in relation to the vari- 
ant schools of thought then prevalent, is an 
invaluable part of a clergyman’s education who 
at this day would be well grounded in the his- 
torical faith of the church. That at least might 
keep him from tumbling at times into theologi- 
cal confusions. One may well confess it as an 
acceptable beginning of his Christian philosophy 
of religion, The living waters in the Holy Land 


82 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


flow fresh and clear from the riven rock; but 
for a preacher to give to the people bits of the 
rock as articles of faith to be accepted is not 
to give the water of life. 

Another more practical doctrine—more char- 
acteristic of Latin than Greek theology—was 
the doctrine of the atonement, and of what is 
involved in the experience of conversion. Rarely 
now, even in evangelistic preaching, do we hear 
these doctrinal terms used. But when I was a 
student at Andover these were questions of 
continued discussion, especially between the 
New School, as represented at Andover, and the 
older Calvinism, as taught at Princeton. Herein, 
perhaps, with his powers of keen analysis, was 
at his best Doctor Hodge, who stood stead- 
fastly on the older Calvinism and was no 
mean antagonist. ‘The anecdote was related 
that on one occasion, when Doctor Hodge had 
finished one of his lectures on the atonement, 
in which he had expounded the Calvinistic 
view of its relation to the justice of God, he 
turned somewhat triumphantly to his class and 
asked: “‘What do they teach at Andover?” 
To that a student who had just come from 
Professor Park’s lecture-room at once replied: 
“Oh! at Andover they teach ‘God so loved the 
world.’” ‘The story does not relate what reply 
Doctor Hodge may have made. Faded indeed 
from our minds are those earnest theological 
discussions, but it would be a great loss if, even 


ANDOVER SEMINARY 83 


in our larger liberty and teaching, we lose any- 
thing of the earnestness of conviction or the 
trained powers of systematic reasoning which 
were a distinctive and crowning virtue of the 
schools of theology in those days. 

The old Andover is gone: its cloistered seclu- 
sion beneath its elms withdrawn from the world 
without, its days for quiet studies, its still hour 
for spiritual contemplation as one looked at 
eventime into the far, fading light of the west- 
ern sky, its dim-lit rooms, where perchance in 
the quietness of the night there might come 
something of the mystic’s spiritual vigils. Those 
who labored and taught there may now be for- 
gotten, but are not their names written in the 
books of the kings of our New England Israel, 
how they taught and how they fought and en- 
tered into their rest? 

The old Andover is gone. The modern world 
with its ever-pressing problems demands new 
men and new measures. Our schools of divinity 
for the preparation of the ministry, to be all 
things to all men for the gospel’s sake, are to be 
found no more in the quiet shades of Andover 
Hill, but as schools of religion in the universities, 
set down often amid confusions and the problems 
of cities; but the spirit of the old Andover is not 
wholly lost; it may be transformed and re- 
embodied in the power of modern teaching and 
preaching of the Christ who would draw all 
men unto himself. 


CHAPTER V 


BEGINNINGS OF MINISTRY AND 
STUDIES ABROAD 


Y life in the army has always seemed 
to me to have been one of the best 
years of my preparation for the minis- 

try. Indispensable as had been the quietness 
of Andover Hill for studies of divinity, the 
great outlying humanity cannot remain as an 
unopened book of life before the preacher who 
would interpret Christ among men. In his 
preparation for the ministry, as well as through- 
out his pastoral experience, one needs to be 
thrown into repeated contacts with human na- 
ture in the raw. One must seek to know the 
real in men. There was no better school for the 
acquisition of such vital knowledge than the 
army in the field of action. Men from all classes 
and of all kinds were thrown into close con- 
tacts and comradeships there. And there came 
moments when one had to discover what was 
real in himself. On many a trying occasion, 
under fire or on an exhaustive service, one had 
to show what was in him. The war service also 
enabled one to discover how much latent good 
under overgrown habits of evil in many in- 
stances is to be found in men. For instance, 
84 


BEGINNINGS OF MINISTRY 85 


there was one man in my company whom, as 
a recruiting officer, I had bailed out of jail, and, 
with some encouraging words and oversight, 
set up as a soldier. Later on, when once I had 
been ordered to advance somewhat our picket- 
line, a movement which drew some scattering 
fire from the enemy, I noticed that whatever 
way I moved along our line to bring the men 
forward, he was immediately in front of me, 
shielding me from any sharpshooters’ fire with 
his own body. 

A similar illustration later on of the latent 
good-will in men under accumulated habits of 
evil was this. Among other recruits was one 
who was generally regarded as about the worst 
“bum” in Brunswick, an utterly worthless 
specimen of humanity. After he had been mus- 
tered in I looked after his pay for him, and ob- 
served the gradually straightening effect upon 
him of the daily drill. Some time afterward, 
when we had been sent on a forced march to 
tear up a stretch of the Weldon Railroad, we 
found ourselves rather short of rations on our 
start back toward camp. That man came to 
me in the evening and held up before me his 
last two hardtack, saying: ‘Take one of them.” 
“No,” I said, “you will need both for to- 
morrow’s long march.” “Lieutenant,” he said, 
“‘take one, or I will throw both down into the 
mud and stamp on them.” He made a good sol- 
dier, and with some satisfaction, after we were 


86 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


mustered out, I saw him going to the polls to 
cast his ballot, perfectly sober and in his night 
mind. 

Possibly it may have been some of these ex- 
periences in my army life with all kinds and 
conditions of men that influenced me in my 
first choice of the place and work at the begin- 
ning of my ministry. I thought it well to begin 
at the bottom, as I had in enlisting in the army. 
Declining some other more attractive openings, 
I accepted, immediately after my graduation 
from the Andover Theological Seminary, a call 
to take charge of a mission chapel of the then 
High Street Church of Providence, R.I. It 
was located in a growing part of the city, at a 
point where an industrial and tenement popu- 
lation were to be reached. It afforded an op- 
portunity to search out families in tenements 
and to learn something, at first hand, of the 
life and habits of working people. I have never 
regretted that humbler but valuable beginning 
of my active ministry. I was ordained there. 
At the close of a year’s service the pastorate 
of the High Street Church had become vacant. 
Some of the influential members of it desired 
me to remain and accept its pastorate; but the 
church had been left in a somewhat divided 
condition. It had before it the necessity of 
erecting a new building, and I felt that it would 
be unwise for me to assume such responsibility. 
I sent in my resignation, which at first the com- 


STUDIES ABROAD 87 


mittee of the church wished me to withdraw, 
but I decided to ask again for its acceptance. 

My action was due partly to my desire to go 
to Germany, to acquaint myself with a differ- 
ent type of theological thinking than I had been 
brought up under at home, and in quietness to 
review my whole religious faith before pur- 
suing further my ministry. Theological learn- 
ing seemed to me at that time to have come to 
a pause in America, and the doctrines as com- 
monly taught in the churches (not, indeed, the 
faith) to have been for the time at least stale- 
mated by the agnostic scientists, in a conflict 
between them which I felt was itself but an 
incident and by no means a finality either in 
the progress of religious thought or in the ad- 
vance of evolutionary science. 

Accordingly, I went to Berlin, and found my- 
self shortly afterward attending the lectures of 
Professor Dorner, whom most of all, from what 
I had heard of his teaching, I desired to know. 
I regard my acquaintance with him and sub- 
sequent familiarity with his writings as epoch- 
making in my theological education. It ushered 
me into a broader, deeper, more thorough 
method and habit of thinking than the acute 
partisan disputations between Andover and 
Princeton or the then prevalent doctrinal 
teachings with which I had become familiar. 
Dorner’s “‘History of Protestant Theology” 
opened a broader field of study, and at the same 


88 RECOLLECTIONS AND. REFLECTIONS 


time required a more searching method of in- 
quiry than the acrobatic way of balancing one’s 
faith in walking along some tight logical rope 
without falling into unbelief. I found old prob- 
lems presenting themselves in new forms. Cer- 
tain more constructive methods of theological 
thinking began at that time in this new envi- 
ronment to open before me. I have often 
thought that if Jonathan Edwards could have 
absorbed the learning of these scholars, and have 
subjected it to the mastery of his reasoning, and 
thought his way out through his own observa- 
tions, he would have become for our time the 
great theologian, in whom knowledge and faith 
were met together and were at peace. His, 
surely, would have been no dogmatist’s ambi- 
tion to speak the last word of New England 
theology. 

Professor Dorner’s teaching, however was 
not all that I had desired to place myself under 
in Germany. I had heard of Julius Miiller 
and his somewhat unique but profound views, 
and likewise of Professor Tholuck and _ his 
evangelistic influence in recovering the faith 
of students. So after a while, somewhat I fear 
to the disappointment of Professor Dorner, who 
had received me with much kindness and hos- 
pitality, I went to Halle. Julius Miller was then 
retiring from active teaching, but I had the 
pleasure of meeting him and acquainting my- 
self more thoroughly with his discussions. 


STUDIES ABROAD 89 


The memory of Tholuck is like a benediction. 
He was one of the most learned, acutely criti- 
cal, comprehensively informed, and at the same 
time the simplest and most spiritual of the evan- 
gelical teachers and preachers in Germany. To 
those students who came under his personal in- 
fluence he gave himself freely, fully, with a child- 
like simplicity in his impartation of his learning 
such as I have hardly known in any one else. 
In his preaching he was the simple evangelist, 
but his was the simplicity of wisdom, and when 
he preached the students flocked to hear him. 
In his personal conversations with students 
whom he took under his special guidance, he 
was the keen questioner and a most stimulating 
conversationalist. He would be sure to send 
one back to his studies with a fresh eagerness 
in the pursuit of truth. And his humility was 
deep as his faith was high and his knowledge 
comprehensive. It was a favorite habit of his 
to ask some student to take his customary walk 
with him, and suddenly, in the midst perhaps 
of ordinary conversation, to surprise him with 
some difficult philosophical or other question. 
Afterward the student could guess at the pro- 
fessor’s estimate of his reply by whether or 
not he soon received another invitation to walk 
with him. I think that this was perhaps a de- 
liberate method of his in picking out men to 
whom he might devote himself, and whom he 
might train for the future work of evangelical 


g0 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


thought and life for Germany. There were 
many anecdotes of such questionings in these 
walks with Tholuck. Once, I was told, he sud- 
denly stopped, as was his wont, and threw this 
question out at the student walking with him: 
“Why did not the Almighty strike the devil 
dead?” The youth immediately replied: “Be- 
cause, I suppose, he wanted to see how the 
creature would develop.” | 

Tholuck took always a special interest in the 
American students who came to Halle. I had 
letters of introduction to him, and it was not 
long before an invitation for the afternoon walk 
came to me. I had been told what I might ex- 
pect, and was somewhat apprehensive about the 
result. He made a few innocent inquiries about 
my studies. Incidentally I had mentioned 
Schleiermacher. Suddenly he quoted a long 
sentence of Schleiermacher and asked me what 
I thought of his definition of the Absolute. 
Fortunately I had read that sentence just before 
—without much understanding I believed—but 
I knew the necessity of rapid fire. At once I gave 
him some attempted interpretation of it, I do 
not remember what, but it seemed to satisfy 
him. After that I had several walks with him, 
without any more attempts of his to expose my 
ignorance, but with the profusion of his knowl- 
edge of books and his wisdom always open to 
my questioning. A Christmas eve in his study, 
where he had gathered the little company of 


STUDIES ABROAD QI 


us American students, remains to this day one 
of the happiest recollections of a lifetime. Never 
before or since have I so felt the simplicity of 
true wisdom. He spoke so simply that a little 
child might have understood every word he 
said, and yet we knew and felt that behind it 
all was the knowledge of a great scholar. And _ 
the unconscious humility of it! He was talk- 
ing to us students, and yet he spake as a little 
child. So I think Jesus must often have taught 
his disciples. Tholuck said to us then: “J have 
but one passion; it is Christ, only Christ!’ He 
gave to each of us some simple Christmas gift, 
and then sent us away with his blessing. 
Another picture of Tholuck I recall, as it af- 
forded me at the time a mischievous pleasure. 
I had fortunately found a lodging-place in the 
home of the widow of a former professor, whose 
husband had been a learned scholar, and she 
gave me for my room his study filled with his 
large collection of books. Roaming around his 
book-shelves I had discovered a pamphlet con- 
taining an address by Leander, the great church 
historian, in the year 1850, in which he had re- 
viewed the history of the first half of the cen- 
tury and then turned and spoke of the problems 
to be met in the coming fifty years and of the 
virtues coming from love. Leander had said 
we shall need in the coming half-century wisdom 
and courage. Tholuck was an omnivorous col- 
lector of books, and I took it for granted that 


92 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


nothing coming from Leander could ever have 
escaped him; but one day I happened tc men- 
tion my interest in reading this, and I discerned 
from his inquiries that it was something that 
he had entirely overlooked. He made no allu- 
sion to it again, but I had the satisfaction of 
feeling that I had caught him in something that 
he did not know. I have no doubt that he 
looked that up afterward. : 

To Professor Tholuck I owe my introduction 
to a line of study which was then entirely new 
to me, but which became afterward one of in- 
creasing interest and profitableness. He asked 
me if I had ever studied Biblical theology. I 
supposed I had. But he commended to me a 
recent book by one of his colleagues, Professor 
Reyschlag, on “The Biblical Theology of the 
New Testament,” and lo! a new way of Biblical 
study opened at once before me. No hint of it 
had been given us in the proof-text methods of 
the systematic theology of Professor Park that 
I can remember. The teachings of the several 
books and sources of the New Testament es- 
pecially had never in that critical way been 
separated and individualized. To the New 
England teacher a proof-text from one book 
of the Bible was as good as another, or better 
possibly, as it may have sustained the profes- 
sor’s particular point. But there was, I found, 
a critical method of studying each book of the 
Bible independently, each as the work of its 


STUDIES ABROAD 93 


own author or compilers, as well as comparing 
likewise their several points of view in rela- 
tion to others. It was not long, however, after 
my return from Germany that the question 
between the old and the new method of Biblical 
study and interpretation became a subject of 
controversy at home, alarmists raising an out- 
cry against scholars who were bringing over 
strange doctrines from Germany. I may men- 
tion in this connection that it was in Berlin that - 
I met for the first time Professor Briggs, who 
was pursuing his Biblical studies there in prepa- 
ration for his subsequent teaching at the Union 
Theological Seminary in New York. 

The break was then made for me from the 
habit of sweeping all over the Scriptures for 
proof-texts, sometimes merely having some 
verbal pertinence with little or no regard to 
their historical relations or interpretations as 
related by several individual authors, or the 
conditions of their times. On the other hand, I 
was introduced into the better way in which 
the Scriptures, like other historical writings, 
are now generally studied and interpreted. 

At that time the German scholars were the 
pioneers in what has now become generally rec- 
ognized as Biblical criticism. Then the guide- 
posts along the lines and at the frequently per- 
plexing crossroads of those inquiries were 
marked by German signs. Indeed, Biblical crit- 
icism made in Germany was not welcomed in 


94 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS | 


our home theological markets, and the few 
teachers who had studied in Germany and im- 
ported some of these novelties made over there 
were looked upon with suspicion and sometimes 
treated with much dogmatic hostility in ecclesi- 
astical circles here. The German scholarship, 
it is true, needed to be searched and sifted by 
the more sober and conservative methods of 
English and American thinking, its theoretical 
chaff sifted from its wheat. Nevertheless, one 
had to read untranslated German writings for 
a considerable period in the latter part of the 
last century if he would avail himself of the 
stores of research which German industrious 
scholarship had gathered and receive from them 
needed material for more tenable interpreta- 
tions of the Biblical literature and greater as- 
surance of his faith. Accordingly, I find that 
for a considerable period after my return from 
my student life abroad the theological books 
and commentaries on my shelves were almost 
entirely in German, with now and then a valu- 
able English book. Later on English and 
American critical scholars became better critics 
and guides than the Germans, who were too 
prone to be led on, each in his own way, after 
his own theory. No one needs now to go to 
Germany at all to discern the best that is 
known and written in modern Biblical scholar- 
ship, and much of the winnowed results of 
these critical studies of the different Scriptures 


STUDIES ABROAD 98 


has been well popularized and brought within 
the reach of intelligent Sunday-school teachers. 
One happy result of this half-century of 
Biblical research and criticism is witnessed in 
the fact that many of the disputations between 
sceptics and believers in country stores, such 
as about Jonah and the whale, have ceased to 
be heard. But God’s ways of revelation through 
history were not at first recognized by many, 
and at church councils ministers who were com- 
ing under the influence of the so-called Biblical 
criticism had to stand a rapid fire of hostile 
questions from those who still moved in the 
worn ways of Biblical exegesis. The proof-text 
theology still held the ecclesiastical fort in New 
England. The historical methods, however, 
gradually became better understood, and many 
soon discovered in their application of them 
new treasures, especially in the Old Testament. 
It may serve as an indication of the general in- 
terest which was then taken in these topics that 
the editor of The Century asked me to contribute 
an article upon them, which I was glad to do, 
and which was printed in that magazine under 
the title, “The New Old Testament.” I doubt 
if an article on such a theme would find ready 
acceptance in any popular magazine at the 
present time. The religious questions of one 
day are quickly superseded by other problems 
which confront the church in a following day. 
One of the best answers in a nutshell to the 


96 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


controversial perplexities of that time was given 
by a colored preacher at a council for his ordi- 
nation. The ecclesiastical atmosphere was sur- 
charged with the question of the inspiration of 
the Scriptures, and the council was expecting 
at any moment to have it break out. After the 
candidate had finished his statement of faith, 
one of the older and more conservative mem- 
bers was not slow in seizing the opportunity to 
put him under questioning. He said: “I did 
not hear him say anything about the Holy 
Scriptures. I would like to know what he be- 
lieves concerning the inspiration of God’s Holy 
Word.” Immediately the colored brother re- 
plied: “I think, sir, it is sufficiently inspired 
for all practical purposes.’’ The effect was in- 
stantaneous. The council burst into laughter, 
the questioner fell back into his seat, and noth- 
ing further was said. 

After my return from abroad I accepted a 
call to the First Church in Bangor, Maine, 
where I entered with fresh enthusiasm upon its 
pastorate. ‘here I was married to one of my 
parishioners—the happiest event in that early 
pastorate and for all my days since. Few of the 
friends and acquaintances of those early days 
now survive, but recollections of much personal 
appreciation and kindness which I received 
there have remained through the years. I re- 
signed the pastorate after seven years of ser- 
vice, although an ecclesiastical council appre- 


STUDIES ABROAD 97 


ciatively advised its continuance. I felt that 
some amalgamation of two churches in the 
immediate vicinity might possibly be effected, 
and the room for expansion did not seem to me 
all that I wished. 

After a few months of waiting I finally de- 
cided, between some conflicting opportunities, 
to accept a call to the First Presbyterian Church 
in Quincy, Ill. I was guided to that choice 
partly because, having lived all my life thus 
far in the East, I thought that some experience 
of life farther west, and in comparatively new 
conditions, might prove a profitable change. 
I have never regretted that decision. One born 
and bred in the East may return from a period 
of life in the West enriched for work amid his 
old associations. 

I improved the period of comparative leisure 
between these two settlements in preparing for 
the press the first-fruits of my studies. | had 
the opportunity to write continuously, without 
the interruption of daily pastoral duties, my 
first book, ‘The Religious Feeling.” My wife 
found time amid her household cares and social 
duties in the first months of our settlement in 
Quincy to write out from my manuscript a fair 
copy for the printers, and I still recall the al- 
most boyish delight with which I brought to 
her the first copy that came to me from the 
press. Had it not been for her unceasing sym- 
pathy and self-sacrificing care in relieving me 


98 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


from hindrances in my work, I never could have 
written the books which I have published. 

I did not know at the time that I owed the 
acceptance of my manuscript and its publica- 
tion by the Scribners to Professor George P. 
Fisher, of Yale, who had read for them the 
manuscript and strongly commended it to them 
for publication. Through the later years of 
my acquaintance with Professor Fisher in New 
Haven, in conversations and in frequent inter- 
views with him in his study, where he was al- 
ways ready to give from the rich stores of his 
memory and the ripe wisdom of his counsels, I 
have had further occasion to feel deep personal 
indebtedness to him. 

At the beginning of my ministry in Quincy 
the church was worshipping in an old building 
in the business part of the city. It had the task 
before it of building a new edifice which we 
greatly needed, and in a better situation. We 
had just brought it to its completion at a large 
expense when, on the Saturday night before we 
were to hold our farewell Sunday service in the 
old building, and on the following Sunday to 
dedicate the new, a destructive fire, from some 
unknown cause, wrapped the finished edifice in 
flames and left nothing but the stone walls 
standing. We gathered, a sorrowful congrega- 
tion, the next day—the work of our hands had 
vanished. | We who were to meet that Sabbath 
with songs of thanksgiving, gathered to mourn. 


STUDIES ABROAD 99 


I rose in the pulpit and preached a sermon on 
the church’s resurrection. It was an appeal to 
a stricken congregation who had already given 
largely and freely to dedicate themselves anew 
and at once to the work of rebuilding. Nobly 
did that congregation respond. The day had 
hardly passed before the movement for recon- 
struction had begun. I may mention with 
gratification that one of the first contributions 
for rebuilding that came on Monday morning 
was from a Jew. The inspection of the walls, 
which fortunately proved to be for the most 
part sound, was begun as soon as the ruins were 
cool enough to permit; the rebuilding was 
pressed as fast as possible, and in due season 
we saw our work again completed, and we dedi- 
cated the twice-built church without a debt. 
The desire to give to my congregation in 
Quincy some helpful acquaintance with the 
newer method of studying the books of the Old 
Testament as one might other historical writ- 
ings, thus bringing out new meanings from many 
passages as well as relieving many difficulties, 
led me to preach a series of sermons which was © 
afterward revised and published in book form, 
entitled “‘Old Faiths in New Light.” Since that 
book was published Biblical and historical re- 
searches and criticism have made great advances, 
and consequently that earlier book would need 
to be largely rewritten in its details at least to 
bring it up to date. But, though in advance of 


100 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


its times when published, in its reconstructive 
principles and methods of approach time has 
shown it to be, I think, thoroughly right. It 
was, I suppose, just because of the timeliness of 
its appearance that it received an extensive 
and grateful welcome from many quarters, es- 
pecially from younger men who were in a posi- 
tion of mental uncertainty and doubt concern- 
ing their religious beliefs. My experiences and 
studies, while in Germany, which I have just 
described, had put me just far enough ahead to 
enable me to reach out a helping hand to them, 
and many letters which I had from them in 
grateful acknowledgment of the help which they 
received from that book have been to me among 
the most grateful rewards of the ministry. All 
the more so because some of those whom I had 
thus far been able to help have themselves in 
their own Biblical criticism become now my 
teachers, whom I have followed and looked up 
to for new knowledge and light. 

This book received, of course, consiaerable 
deprecatory criticism from those who held fast 
to the faith once delivered to them of the verbal 
inspiration of the Scriptures. But they made no 
effort to disturb me, or to cite me for trial. On 
the contrary, Professor Patton, who had just 
been engaged in a heated controversy with a 
renowned liberal preacher of Chicago—wrote 
an article in the Presbyterian organ, The In- 
terior, in which he took the ground that writing 


STUDIES ABROAD IOI 


as an apologist I was justified in advancing 
such views, although as a dogmatic teacher it 
might be otherwise. And when some time later 
I returned to my Congregational inheritance, 
the good-natured editor of The Interior wrote 
for me a pleasing commendatory farewell, con- 
cluding by observing that he was glad I was 
gone, as his arm was tired keeping the Philis- 
tines off from me. 

I recall also with some amusement a call which 
I made about that time on Professor Briggs, 
who had then become the professor of Hebrew 
in the Presbyterian Union Seminary. I was talk- 
ing over with him the possible reception among 
our ministers and clergy of the more intelligent, 
scholarly views of the Bible. He cautioned me 
then as a young man not to publish anything at 
that time prematurely, but to wait until he and 
Professor Hitchcock could prepare the church.for 
it. He pointed to an array of earlier books on his 
shelves, most of them from Presbyterian sources, 
in which larger views of Biblical inspiration 
were indicated. ‘There,’ he said, “‘is my ar- 
senal.” It was, however, only a few months 
afterward that he appeared on the theological 
tournament field, clad in full armor, ready to 
meet any antagonist who might challenge him. 
I was then quite content to remain an onlooker. 

Professor Briggs, as I knew and frequently 
met him afterward, had, as it seemed to me, a 
delightful unconsciousness of how his most 


102 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


peaceable intentions were admirably adapted 
to arouse the most hostile antagonisms. ‘‘There 
is Professor Briggs,’ so said Professor Fisher 
of Yale once to me, “he loves church unity so 
much that he is willing at any moment to fight 
for it.” Professor Briggs had no hesitancy as 
to reordination. He once said to me that he 
would be willing to receive as many ordinations 
as there were churches to give them to him. 
While he had always the courage of his schol- 
arly convictions, he was at heart humble and 
a man of peace. His published writings bear 
witness to his broad and thorough scholarship, 
and I find it frequently convenient to refer to 
them. 

During my pastorate in Quincy Professor 
Patton, of the Presbyterian Theological Semi- 
nary, at Chicago, invited me to give a lecture to 
his students, and I had taken for my subject 
. “The Mission of the Peacemaker in Modern 
Thought.” Some time afterward I had occasion 
to appreciate the saying of the wise man: “‘ Be- 
hold, how great a fire a little matter kindleth.”’ 
For so it came to pass that a passage in an 
extempore sermon, which was taken down in 
shorthand by a friendly reporter and after- 
ward printed in a small volume of sermons, 
served as the spark that kindled the Andover 
controversy. It happened in this way. A club 
of unbelievers, with whom I had had some 
friendly acquaintance, offered to attend my 


STUDIES ABROAD 103 


evening service if I would take up and discuss 
some of the beliefs of the church. So challenged, 
I took pleasure, of course, in accepting their 
offer, and they came in a body to church as 
they had promised. My aim naturally was not 
dogmatic, but a task of so-called Christian 
apologetics was laid upon me. These discourses, 
so prepared and delivered, were subsequently 
reprinted, with only a few verbal changes, in a 
volume called “The Orthodox Theology of 
To-day.” 


CHAPTER VI 


THE ANDOVER CONTROVERSY AND ITS 
RESULTS 


HORTLY after the publication of my 
S “Orthodox Theology of To-day,” I re- 

ceived, without any premonition, an in- 
vitation to the chair of systematic theology in 
Andover Theological Seminary. The thought 
of such a thing had never entered my head. 
Still less could I have anticipated that a single 
passage in one of those sermons, which was 
thrown out as a possible relief from the over- 
shadowing moral difficulties of the doctrine of 
everlasting punishment, would be made an occa- 
sion for an outbreak of theological controversy. 
Indeed, in my sermon to those inquiring unbe- 
lievers I had passed over that point with a 
mere suggestion of a possible answer to it, 
which we may know hereafter. My own chief 
interest in those discourses related to a much 
broader as well as prior and much more funda- 
mental belief than the possible duration of the 
punishment of sin; first I would know what 
may be the divine power to forgive sin. It was 
that which Christ claimed as the power of God. 
Are there any limits to it, here and now, or in 
the long years of some future life? This was 

104 


THE ANDOVER CONTROVERSY _ 105 


to me the heart of my preaching to that group 
of unbelievers. The topic of my third chapter 
was “Forgiveness and Suffering.” I had sought 
to conserve what was true in the older sacri- 
ficial views of the atonement in what seemed 
to me the deepest as well as simplest, most 
human truth of all—the necessity of suffering 
in the very act and victory of the forgiveness 
of sin. That became in my mind the thought 
of the divine satisfaction and peace of the 
Christ, the forgiveness of the sin of the world 
which crucified him. Nowadays the very words 
which were formerly familiarly used in our pul- 
pits, characterizing diverse views of the atone- 
ment, would carry little or no meaning to the 
people in general. But the sacrificial reality of 
the love of God in the Christ upon the cross has 
not been lost, the simplest and divinest truth 
in all our doctrines of the Cross is conserved in 
the devoted and often sacrificial service of many 
of the younger people throughout our churches. 
From such service, joyous as it often is sacri- 
ficial, we theologians may yet learn how better 
to restate and purify our doctrines of the atone- 
ment. 

It was only incidentally that, in considering 
the difficulties presented in current views of 
retribution, I urged the limitations of our knowl- 
edge of the ways of God hereafter in a chapter ' 
on “Imperfect Theories of the Future Life.” I 
had sought to find out what parts of the Bubli- 


106 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


cal teachings of the future life are left in ob- 
scurity, purposely so left it may be, in the 
shadows of revelation. Among these I had 
mentioned three elements which the Bible leaves 
in the dusk, and there it is best for us to leave 
them. As one of these I referred to an obscure 
passage relating to a possible intermediate life, 
and our ignorance concerning what may occur 
between death and the last judgment. I had, 
however, suggested that the Scriptures left open 
unknown possibilities of the divine grace after 
death, and from the dogmatism of our logic of 
the letter of Scripture I had claimed the human 
right to take refuge in the silence of God’s word 
—to find some comfort and hope in the merci- 
ful obscurities of revelation. Many letters from 
readers who had received help in confirming 
their faith from these suggestions showed that 
there was need of some such attempt to set 
forth the beliefs of the church in adaptation 
to the wants of to-day. 

For several years the inevitable conflict be- 
tween the old theology and the coming new 
theology had been foreshadowed. The differ- 
ences, at bottom, were not really so divisive 
as to many champions of the old they seemed 
to be. The old Edwardsian theology had al- 
ready been considerably made over in the lec- 
tures of Professor Park at Andover, although 
in his new interpretation of Edwards he had 
labored with his usual logical acumen to show 


THE ANDOVER CONTROVERSY 107 


that he was a true interpreter of Edwards. In- 
deed, in my notes of his lectures to our class 
concerning the last things, I find that at the 
close of a series of objections to the doctrine of 
future punishment he himself had made the 
suggestion that God might have methods of 
dealing with sinners unknown to us! The real 
Andover issue, underlying all this was not that; 
it was between the finality of the prevalent 
orthodoxy and the liberty to be granted to the 
new theology. But the time had not fully 
come for that issue to be brought to a point of 
decision. Doctor Alden, the then secretary of | 
the Congregational Board of Foreign Missions, 
an able as well as hearty believer in the doc- 
trine that this life is the only time of probation 
for a sinner to become converted and to come 
to Christ (or at least the only time that we 
have any scriptural authority to think about) 
had come to cherish this orthodoxy as an in- 
dispensable condition to the continuance of 
the work of foreign missions, to which for years 
he had been devoted. It happened by some 
inscrutable providence that he had fallen in 
with a copy of my book, and it was enough to 
cause him to take up arms. He sounded forth- 
with the note of alarm. He consulted, I am 
credibly informed, with Professor Park and ° 
with Doctor Dexter, then editor of The Con- 
gregationalist, with the result that in a follow- 
ing issue that journal, which had theretofore 


108 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


showed no disposition to interfere, came out in 
an editorial objecting to the confirmation by 
the visitors of my election by the trustees. 

The controversy so begun upon seemingly 
so slight occasion, soon ceased to be one of 
merely personal or local importance. It spread 
rapidly throughout the Congregational churches, 
and involved in animated controversy the con- 
duct and administration of our whole foreign- 
missionary work. The prolongation and final 
issues of it, so far as Andover Seminary was 
concerned, have been so well told in President 
Tucker’s admirable volume, ““My Generation,” 
that it is needless for me to write at any length 
of my own reminiscences of it. My own in- 
clination would have led me to end the con- 
troversy, so far as I was concerned, as soon as 
it was begun, by declining the position which 
had been offered me. My interests and special 
studies had been along the lines of Christian 
apologetics rather than of systematic theology, 
and my instinctive desire, confirmed by my 
army life, was to think out my own faith among 
men in the world of human interests and affairs 
rather than in the comparative seclusion of 
academic studies. But as a banner of the ad- 
vancing theology had been, unsought, placed 
in my hand, such a refusal to stand, at least 
for a while, could not be considered. 

There is no better witness than President 
Tucker to narrate, as with full knowledge and 


THE ANDOVER CONTROVERSY 109 


fairness he has done, the ensuing conflict be- 
tween the two boards of Andover Seminary. 
While this continued I felt obliged to stand. 
Several efforts came to me from the trustees 
to induce me to accept offers of other positions 
in the seminary which they felt they could 
maintain. As I read over the urgent letters 
and telegrams which came to me in those days 
of silent waiting on my part, I wonder how I 
finally could have withstood the appeal that 
they made, and certainly no one ever had more 
reason for gratitude to his friends than they 
had laid me under. But, wisely or unwisely, I 
followed what seemed to me to be my own 
star, and eventually declined the final offer 
which they brought before me to create a new 
chair at Andover of Christian apologetics, 
which would be so endowed as to be indepen- 
dent of any power of the visitors of control 
over the appointment of its occupant. It cer- 
tainly was an attractive offer, as my course of 
reading and study had led me strongly in that 
direction. It was difficult indeed for me, in 
declining to take such a position of leadership, 
to disappoint friends in whose judgment I had 
every reason to confide, and who had stood by 
my positions with so unwavering fidelity. I 
knew what they desired to make of the An- 
dover of the coming day, as they had been 
faithful to the Andover of the past. I ques- 
tioned, however, whether some legal difficulties 


110 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


might not have to be met and settled before a 
sufficiently independent position could be se- 
cured, such as was particularly desirable in 
a chair of apologetics fitted to meet the ques- 
tions of the coming days. 

It was certainly a critical decision in my own 
career, but, like other important decisions that 
I have had to make in my life, I simply dis- 
covered in time that I had come to them and 
found at length my mind had just been made 
up. I never could tell, for instance, when I de- 
cided to enter the army—it was not hastily, 
but one day I found that of course I was to en- 
list, which I did. I have come to have much 
faith in what might be called subconscious de- 
cisions, the decisions which one seems even- 
tually to follow rather than to make. 

The situation was relieved by occasional 
humorous incidents. On a visit to Professor 
Tucker during this period, he took down from 
his book-shelves a copy of my book which his 
dog accidentally had discovered and vigorously 
chewed up, which Professor Tucker said he 
should keep as a relic. 

After my declination of the Andover pro- 
fessorship the conflict between the visitors and 
the trustees continued. It involved the liberty 
of the professors to teach in accordance with 
their interpretations under the Andover Creed. 
The issue thus joined went up on legal grounds 
to the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. A suit 


THE ANDOVER CONTROVERSY . 111 


was instituted by the visitors against the An- 
dover professors, who had been sustained by 
the trustees. It was a critical point in the his- 
tory of the liberty of theological teaching in 
New England. An adverse decision would have 
put the Andover School of Theology hopelessly 
under the rule of the dead man’s hand. It was 
a happy moment for the upholders of liberty 
of religious thought at Andover when finally 
the decision of the court in their favor was ren- 
dered. Although resting mainly on the ques- 
tions which had arisen between the action of 
the visitors and the legal rights of the trustees, 
it left the professors in full possession of their 
chairs. (The full printed reports of the briefs - 
and arguments are preserved in the libraries of 
Andover Seminary, now at Harvard.) Professor 
Egbert C. Smyth’s answer to the charges aimed 
especially against him surprised the opposition, 
as he boldly maintained his right not merely 
to interpret the creed according to the literal 
understanding of words as they were used to 
define different theological views at the time, 
but according to their spirit and intent as his- 
torically interpreted, and as the writers of the 
creed might be held to interpret them in their 
adaptations to the theological questions of the 
day. These writers were progressive theologians 
in their time. The higher obligation of their 
successors is one of the spirit and the life. An- 
cient creeds are not halting-places, but marks 


112 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


and signs along the way of the leading of the 
Spirit of truth from age to age. Shortly after 
this decision of liberation of Andover from the 
dead man’s hand, by a change in the Board of 
Visitors, further prosecution of the issues with 
the trustees was dropped. 


THE CONFLICT FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN THE 
AMERICAN BOARD OF FOREIGN MISSIONS 


It is an interesting fact of history that great 
movements have often had their origins in 
humble sources. The names of those who first 
caused them may have been soon forgotten. It 
was so with the antislavery agitation. A few 
agitators here and there—a little fire kindled— 
and behold a national conflagration. So, like- 
wise, has it been in religious history. That 
saying of Carlyle’s is true: “‘The hands of 
many brave forgotten have made it a world 
for us.”’ 

The Andover trustees had little thought that 
they were throwing a spark into Congregation- 
alism throughout the land when they were sim- 
ply filling a vacant chair of theology at An- 
dover. But an agitation followed which could 
not be settled until it was carried up beyond 
Andover to the platform of the American Board, 
and made at least a determinative policy of its 
missionary work throughout the whole world. 

The same influential persons who had stirred 
up the Andover matter dominated the Pruden- 


RESULTS OF THE CONTROVERSY 113 


tial Committee of the American Board. They 
began to question and to hold back from the 
foreign-missionary work of the Congregational 
churches young men who seemed to be at all 
infected with the new theology. Dogmatic tests 
were rigorously applied to candidates desirous of 
entering the missionary work by Doctor Alden, 
the secretary of the board. Over the door of his 
office for all such candidates might have been 
written: ‘‘ All hope abandon, ye who enter here.” 
It was urged that to preach any future proba- 
tion for the heathen who had not heard of 
Christ in this world, would “‘cut the nerve of 
missions.”” The American Board thus set itself 
above the churches, as well as the seminaries, 
as the final judge of orthodoxy. 

An initial test of the position which the 
churches might hold occurred in my installa- 
tion by a broadly representative council of the 
Congregational churches as pastor of the Center - 
Church of New Haven. That church had pur- 
posely called a much larger council than those 
ordinarily invoked from the churches of the 
immediate vicinage, desiring to make it more 
broadly representative. For several hours after 
I had submitted a statement of my beliefs I 
was subjected to a rapid fire of questions, and 
over my answers a free exchange of views was 
kept up for several hours by members of the 
council. Then at length the council withdrew, 
as is customary, to render a decision. 


114 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


Although some of my friends had been appre- 
hensive of the result, I had not for a moment 
entertained any doubt of the ultimate issue, 
for I felt that in so far as I was a liberal theo- 
logian I was thereby in reality a conservator 
of the faith and that only in advancing full 
abreast of increasing knowledge and in teach- 
ableness of the Spirit could our religious inheri- 
tance be saved and our preaching bear fruit in 
its season. The action of the council justified 
this trust in the Congregational ministry. 
With practical unanimity the council proceeded 
to my installation. Succeeding councils, as — 
notably one somewhat later of Doctor Gordon 
in the Old South Church in Boston, and after- 
ward of Doctor Munger in New Haven, estab- 
lished further precedents which were followed 
in other instances. Nevertheless the domina- 
tion of Secretary Alden and those associated 
with him in the control of the American Board, 
and their refusal to send as missionaries to the 
heathen young men who were at all infected 
with what they deemed to be these obnoxious 
views, transferred the whole question to the 
platform of the American Board. 

The issue thus joined was twofold, one pri- 
marily doctrinal—the extent to which theologi- 
cal freedom should be allowed on the foreign- 
mission field; and the other ecclesiastical—the 
question whether executive officers of the board, 
or the ecclesiastical councils of the churches, 


RESULTS OF THE CONTROVERSY 115 


were to be accepted as the final judges of minis- 
terial orthodoxy. 

This larger importance of the controversy, 
which, from such beginning, had spread until 
it involved our entire denominational body, 
was precipitated by the refusal of the board to 
appoint as missionaries several younger men 
whom they deemed not sufficiently orthodox in 
their theological views and tendencies. Over 
such cases the issue was first joined at the meet- 
ing of the American Board in Des Moines. The 
cases of students both from Andover and Yale 
were to come up for consideration there. Most 
corporate members of the board, as well as 
the majority of its Prudential Committee were 
known to be thoroughly conservative in their 
views. Besides that, the issue thus raised in- 
volved the larger interest of a more dominant 
educational policy, as distinct from evangelical 
efforts, or at least the larger development of 
the educational side of evangelistic missionary 
work. There were not wanting, however, some 
members of the board who were in sympathy 
with the new movement, and there were others 
not too conservative to be opposed to reason- 
able adjustments of old faiths to new conditions 
of life and thought. A few of us went out to 
Des Moines to make at least our protest against 
the assumption of theological authority by the 
Prudential Committee, and their refusal to per- 
mit some of our choicest young men to carry 


116 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


the water of life to the heathen, although our 
churches were willing to receive them at home. 

I well remember how, on the morning of the 
day when this matter was to be opened for dis- 
cussion, a few of us, about twenty in all, with- 
out previous consultation with one another, 
met informally and quite accidentally in a room 
in a hotel to consider the situation before us. 
We had no time for anything but an interchange 
of friendly greetings and an expression of our 
willingness to take the platform, as opportunity 
might be given us, and to make, each one of us 
according to his individual judgment, an ex- 
pression of his views. So we went to the hall 
of the meeting, and then what afterward was 
fittingly characterized as the “great debate” 
began. The report of the Prudential Committee 
was read and their action defended, and the door 
of utterance was opened. On their side there 
was no lack of defenders of the faith. One after 
another, as we could gain recognition, we made 
our appeal for larger liberty of faith and for 
trust in the men from our churches who wished 
to devote themselves to missionary work. At 
first the audience received us with little mani- 
festation of approval. Indeed, they appeared 
rather to be against us. But through the long 
debate the atmosphere seemed to be changing, 
the large congregation warmed toward us, and 
we felt that with the people below the platform 
at least we had won the day. When the vote 


RESULTS OF THE CONTROVERSY 117 


came we were in a minority, as we had ex- 
pected; but the final resolutions were somewhat 
indecisive. It was a drawn battle, and the 
issue remained for further discussion and final 
determination. We felt that we had at least 
opened a door which henceforth no man could 
shut. One of the keenest as well as broadest- 
minded representatives of the conservatives as- 
sured us after the indecisive action, which he 
had aided in securing, that he foresaw that we 
had won our case. And so, after two more 
meetings of the board, it turned out to be. 


This history is well worth while to record, 
for it is part of the whole movement through 
which at the present time our younger minis- 
try have gained that large liberty of prophecy 
which they may now take for granted. Not 
without cost has this freedom of faith been won 
for the generation to come by the generation 
of which I am one of the last lingering survi- 
vors. It is also well worthy of record that quite 
exceptionally, almost alone in the history of | 
theological discussions, this controversy, which 
at one time threatened to split our entire Con- 
gregational body, was fought to a finish, and 
has itself passed by and been well-nigh for- 
gotten even within the lifetime of the genera- 
tion in which it arose. Indeed, not a few of 
those who were most opposed to one another 
during that period were quite willing to forget 


118 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


any divisive memories of their earlier conten- 
tion, and have been closely associated with one 
another in carrying forward at home and abroad 
all the good works of the churches. 

One reason for this reconciliation, besides 
others, it should be justly said, was to be found 
in the calm self-restraint and patient endurance 
of those who at the time suffered most from 
the mistrust and oppositions which they ex- 
perienced; and above all in the spirit of self- 
effacement, of serenity and humility in the ad- 
vocacy for others of what it was sought to deny 
to him, as well as of unfaltering courage and 
wisdom in leadership, of my brother, Profes- 
sor Egbert C. Smyth. Even in the familiarity 
of his household I had never heard him speak 
for himself one word of complaint or resent- 
ment amid misrepresentations and reproaches. 
Rightly did his pupils in those days speak of 
him as Saint John. He was rejected during the 
controversy for re-election on the Board of 
Foreign Missions, to which he had assiduously 
given years of service and to which he continued, 
nevertheless, to give.in all possible ways his 
devotion; but he lived long enough before his 
translation to see the liberty of interpretation 
acknowledged by the churches for his pupils 
who were trained in that historical knowledge 
and catholicity in which he himself saw the re- 
vealing of the Spirit of truth. His life’s work 
needs no other crown of glory. 


RESULTS OF THE CONTROVERSY 119 


The particular question concerning the pos- 
sibility of some future probation about which 
this whole controversy at first centred, has 
now passed entirely away from present theo- 
logical consideration. Indeed, the very word 
probation, whether in this world or another, 
which once was one of the most familiar phrases 
current in evangelical circles, is rarely if ever 
heard now in evangelical preaching. Other 
questions, other conceptions of life, other words 
are brought over into our theological schools 
from critical researches and from the sciences 
now in fashion. 

At the time when this controversy was rag- 
ing, the particular point at issue was, in my 
own thinking, one of disappearing importance. 
My reading was along other lines. While it was 
supposed by some others to have been my daily 
theological meat and drink, something about 
which my preaching was supposed to be mainly 
concerned, I had not cared to mention it from 
my pulpit. I had not only the social, industrial, 
and civic problems around me in the city, which 
I felt must be met by a more thorough presen- 
tation of social salvation, but also in my con- 
gregation I had students of divinity, as well as 
others whose inherited faith was often perplexed 
by the agnostic doubts and other perplexities 
of increasing knowledge. Divinity students” 
coming to Yale in comparative ignorance of 
these disturbing opinions, having to meet a 


120 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


whole tide of them suddenly, would sometimes 
feel carried away from their moorings, and 
would occasionally come to me for counsel, 
sometimes doubting whether in this state of 
dubiety they ought, in mental honesty, to con- 
tinue their preparation for the ministry. Some 
such I used to see frequently among my hear- 
ers. So, while I did my part in the continued 
effort to obtain a reasonable liberty of faith in 
the American Board, and especially in securing 
the return of Mr. Robert Hume to his life-work 
in India, I had not cared to dwell in my pulpit 
on the subject which had kindled so great a 
theological fire. Indeed, I was both amused 
and gratified when one day one of my parish- 
ioners said to me, near the time when this mis- 
sionary controversy was at its height: “‘ We hear 
a good deal said now about future probations, 
but I have never heard our pastor express his 
views on the subject; I wish you would preach 
to us a sermon on it.”’ I did preach, as I find 
in looking over my papers, one sermon after the 
_ meeting of the American Board in Springfield, 

in which I contended urgently for the same 
liberty for our missionaries which we had for 
our ministers at home. 


CHAPTER VII 
WORK IN NEW HAVEN 


Y life in New Haven soon became 
ff crowded with activities. There were 
the studies which at Andover might 
have been pursued with leisurely thoroughness, 
and which I could suffer no other pressing duties 
to compel me entirely to give up. The facilities 
of the Yale libraries and laboratories opened to 
me fresh and ever tempting opportunities to 
pursue them, and I cherished every hour of in- 
tervening leisure to turn aside to my books. It 
is worth while observing that a desired course 
of reading or the pursuit of scientific knowledge, 
if steadily continued, it may be only between 
times in an active life, may in the end be found 
to have given one hardly hoped for acquisitions. 
Indeed, I should advise any clergyman, for the 
sake of his own intellectual growth and as a 
preventive from falling into professional one- 
sidedness, to have some one intellectual pur- 
suit, entirely disconnected from his clerical’ 
duties or necessary preparations of his sermons, 
some intellectual hobby to which at any mo- 
ment of leisure he may turn. Much reading 
may be done even while waiting for others to 
call. While often longing for more leisure for 
121 


122 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


uninterrupted study or continuous writing, I 
have never regretted the decision which led 
me, from my graduation from the school of life 
and death in the army, to continue my read- 
ing and my thinking in daily contact with the 
lives of people, in touch with real life, as a 
minister of a church is perforce compelled to 
do, rather than in the more favorable seclusion 
of a professor’s study. 

One is in peril intellectually and humanly if 
he falls prey to a single hobby; if he has been 
so fortunate as to have two hobbies, the one 
may save him from the peril of absorption in 
the other. If he has three, he may be safer 
still. Of course he may scatter too much and 
accomplish little in any direction. But there 
is rest and freshening of spirit for any man to 
find in some intellectual exercise to which he 
may turn from the pressure and weariness of 
his necessary occupations. 

Sometimes, indeed, during my pastorate in 
New Haven, I felt that I was trying overmuch 
to do the work of three men, and doing none 
as I could wish; yet as I look back I do not 
regret the necessity that seemed thus laid upon 
me, however much more in one direction or 
another might. otherwise have been accom- 
plished. One’s life in the retrospect becomes 
rich in memories coming up from all sides if, 
while it was being lived, it has been permitted 
to keep in touch with other lives and interests, 


WORK IN NEW HAVEN 123 


to feel the large human life all around in which 
we may have our little personal part. 

There were three main directions in which 
during my entire pastorate J found myself 
pulled, not to say at times almost distracted. 
The first two, for every settled clergyman, are 
his never-ceasing pastoral cares and his pulpit. 
The third, closely related to these, yet widen- 
ing beyond the limits of one’s own parish, was 
my interest in social conditions and civic and , 
public affairs. That was an inherited one; it 
was part and substance of my birthright. My 
father was a college professor, but he was also 
a patriotic citizen, a tireless and undaunted 
advocate of movements for the improvement 
of his town, an antislavery pioneer and the 
builder of better schools for the people of the 
State. One brought up in such an atmosphere, 
and revering so noble an example, could not be 
constrained even by the pressing claims of a 
parish to confine himself within his own sheep- 
fold and to feel no call of public responsibilities. 
The good citizen is not merely a citizen who is 
content to regard himself as good. 

My reminiscences must alternate, accord- 
ingly, between these three distinctive aspects 
of my life, as each contributed to the other, or 
indeed as the one may have been occasion of 
the defects of the other, but as they were cer- 
tainly intertwined and never held leisurely 
apart in the evolution of my faith and my life. 


124. RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


When I entered upon my ministry the preach- 
ing then prevalent was largely addressed to the 
individual and his personal relations to God. 
Emphasis, indeed, was laid upon his duties to 
his fellow men, and the churches generally were 
abounding in charities and interested in all mis- 
sionary efforts at home and abroad. But there 
had been no specific attention given in our 
theological seminaries to what is now every- 
where emphasized as the sociological prepara- 
tion of the ministry of the church in this world. 
So far as I am aware, Professor Tucker was one 
of the first to introduce as an essential part of 
his lectures on homiletics a course of practical 
instruction in Christian sociology. But the 
times were ripe for a new advance, both in doc- 
trine and in practice, in this direction. 

The writings of Frederic Dennison Maurice 
and my access to the writings of the earlier 
German socialists, especially the views of the 
so-called Christian socialists, led me to the 
early conviction that a larger social work was 
opening before the church, and that the minis- 
try were called to a wider service and put un- 
der new responsibilities for the social redemp- 
tion of the world. 

Under such influences I had added, in 1892, 
a chapter on “Social Immortality” to the new 
edition of my book on “‘The Orthodox Theology 
of To-day.” One of my earlier sermons in 
Center Church was on the gospel of all things 


WORK IN NEW HAVEN 125 


to all men. I found in my earlier ministry in 
New Haven that, while my church abounded in 
all local charities, and many an individual citi- 
zen stood for all good causes, there was little 
co-operative work for social welfare, and it was 
dificult to obtain united public sentiment and 
support in any effort for reform or in effective 
protests against civic evils. Labor questions, 
likewise, were then beginning to be agitated, of 
which the churches seemed to be singularly 
unconscious. It so happened that early in my 
pastorate I had found opportunity to make the 
acquaintance of a number of men outside our 
parish circles who would not have been gen- 
erally numbered among the so-called good 
citizens or, some of them, regarded as desir- 
able personal acquaintances. There were for 
several years small groups among them who 
were reading Karl Marx’s book on ‘‘Capital 
and Labor”—that delicate discussion of the 
theories of capital and the distribution of 
profits which the radical socialism of that day 
looked onward to as forecasting the coming 
revolution. Accordingly it became necessary for 
me, as a part of my continued education as a 
prophet, so to speak, of Christianity, to go 
through that book and others, some of them 
not accessible except in German, in an effort 
to understand better the tendencies and ideas 
then beginning to ferment in the industrial 
world. One thing led to another, and ere long 


126 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


I found myself in personal acquaintance with 
several of the leaders in these matters outside 
our circles of church acquaintance. A trades- 
union had come into existence at that time in 
New Haven, and I had received an invitation 
to address its members ‘in their council-hall. 
The conditions of the address granted me full 
liberty to say anything I pleased, but with the 
further eminently fair condition that afterward 
the lecturer should listen and answer questions 
for as long a time as he himself had taken in 
his lecture. I was glad to accept such an invi- 
tation and we had, mutually I think, a free and 
interesting time of it. Subsequently, as a result, 
I posted on the door of their lecture-room a no- 
tice that I proposed to take up in three dis- 
courses from the pulpit of Center Church the 
issues under discussion, and I extended to them 
an invitation to be present. To this they re- 
sponded, and they came in full force to hear 
what the editor of a small, somewhat anarchistic 
paper in New Haven said would be the dying 
swan-song of the pastor of Center Church. I 
had not, indeed, deemed it altogether expedient 
to consult beforehand my parishioners about 
my intentions. I felt that it was my own re- 
sponsibility in which I should not involve my 
friends; but the feeling in those outside circles 
concerning the church was shown in the ex- 
pectation that even the introduction of such 
topics in the pulpit might have disastrous effects 


WORK IN NEW HAVEN 127 


on the pastor. I knew, however, the historic 
spirit of Center Church, and I was not mis- 
taken in trusting to them after the event, how- 
ever I might have deemed it expedient not to 
ask some of them for advice beforehand. 

The industrial questions which then were 
most in discussion in such quarters were quite 
different from the labor agitations which have 
since become general. They circled then mainly 
around the question, What should be a fair dis- 
tribution of profits? Indeed, in those days, 
the discussions seemed more abstract, involving 
more economical theories, than they have since 
become in the conflicts between labor-unions 
and capitalists. One of the older members of 
my church, who had large capital interests and 
who cherished the old ways, a good friend of 
mine, had shaken his head ominously when he 
first learned of the unheard-of invitation which 
I ventured to give, and he had listened doubt- 
fully, I imagine, at first. Afterward, when he 
glanced up at the galleries filled with work- 
ing people, and the whole congregation joined 
in singing “America” (not my swan-song), 
he was touched by it, and owned that it was 
a good thing. These discourses were subse- 
quently printed at the request of a committee 
of Center Church, and they formed afterward | 
the basis of a chapter on “‘Social Ethics” in my 
volume on “Christian Ethics.”’ 

My interest in public matters had not been 


128 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


lost from the time of my childhood, when we 
boys used to attend the town meetings at 
Brunswick, and witnessed the usual commo- 
tion started between the Bourbons, as we used 
to call those—mostly sea-captains—who had 
been profitably engaged in West Indies trade in 
rum and molasses, who were against spending 
any town money that could possibly be avoided 
for schools and village improvements, and, on 
the other side, the more progressive citizens. 
Such town meetings have now generally ceased 
to be the means of educating the youth in pub- 
lic affairs, as they once were throughout New 
England. One who was brought up in that 
more primitive school of citizenship may plead 
excuse if he may seem as a clergyman to take 
an undue personal concern in civic government. 
Such at least was part of my predestination in 
the Christian ministry. Pastoral duties were 
ever present and pressing, but civic conditions 
in New Haven, especially some conditions sur- 
rounding Yale College, could not be overlooked. 
My church stood at the very centre of the city, 
confronting, on the other side of the green, the 
city hall, which was also then the seat of the 
county commissioners by whom liquor licenses 
were issued. That was one of the nests where 
political eggs were hatched. Fortunately, after 
several years of my pastorate, public attention 
had sufficiently been awakened to render it 
possible for a good-government club to be or- 


WORK IN NEW HAVEN 129 


ganized and to find support from men of means 
and influence. For some years I was called upon 
to serve as the chairman of that club. There 
had also been formed a law-and-order league, 
which did valuable service in procuring sufh- 
cient evidence to be worked up in reformatory 
movements. One principle, too often neglected, 
was observed throughout our work, to which 1s 
largely due such measure of success as we at- 
tained—we never would make any charges until 
we had obtained sufficient evidence beforehand 
to maintain them in court, if necessary. I had 
deemed it advisable, so far as I had to assume 
any personal responsibility in this work, never 
to make any charge or accusation of misconduct 
on the part of any official, or saloon-keeper, or 
purveyor of vice, unless I had at hand evidence 
to defend me from a libel suit, although no such 
suit might ever be brought. Often it has seemed 
to me that overzealous reformers have made 
serious and sometimes wholesale charges, which 
they had good reason to believe to be true, but 
of which they had no real evidence. They were 
thereby placed at a double disadvantage: not 
only were they themselves liable to be mis- 
judged, but the evil-doers, knowing their lack 
of proof, could safely laugh among themselves 
over the premature efforts to put them in a 
corner. On the other hand, as violators of the 
laws soon found out that we knew what we 
were about whenever we brought a case against 


130 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


them, they began to have a due regard for our 
reformatory work, as well as respect for those 
engaged in it. They became more careful of 
disregarding our public warnings. They had a 
more realizing sense of what they might find 
themselves up against. The details of this con- 
tinued work for good government in New 
Haven are recorded in our reports and various 
communications in the newspapers; extracts 
preserved in my scrap-book would now have 
little interest, but they bear witness to per- 
sistent efforts and increasing results in days 
now past and gone. 

Many of the supporters of this early civic 
work have already departed this life; and new 
occasions call for new men as well as new duties. 
I may refer to two instances only which con- 
tain an encouragement for similar reformatory 
or other works for the good of the community 
at the present time. One was the contest which 
we were led to undertake for a better city char- 
ter. The one under which we had been goy- 
erned we found to be singularly defective, 
especially in the control of the police depart- 
ment. It provided for a bipartisan commission 
of police, which had come practically to mean 
a bi-patronage police commission. Two of these 
commissioners were manufacturers and dealers 
in soft drinks, and they divided between them- 
selves the supply of soda-water for the saloons 
in the city. Every policeman on his beat knew 


WORK IN NEW HAVEN 131 


where the pull between the saloon and the 
police commissioners’ interests lay. Naturally 
any effort to obtain an improved charter met 
at once with opposition from various interested 
political as well as profiteering interests that 
were more or less prosperous under the existing 
system. 

Several of the lawyers and other citizens who 
were interested in the matter had drawn up a 
new charter and, with the evidence which we 
had obtained of the defects of the old charter, 
we went up to the legislature and fought 
through a merry hearing for its adoption. The 
liquor powers, of course, stood for the old char- 
ter and their party interests. We were defeated 
in this initial attack, as we had expected to be. 
But our defeat in that session cleared the way 
for the adoption of an improved charter at the 
next. The political leaders, who had set our 
work aside, found it incumbent on themselves, 
in order to retain their own hold, to do some- 
thing in the way of reform. It would also be 
fair to them to say that after they had turned 
us civic intruders down, their eyes had been 
opened to some evils which they themselves 
might well remedy and gain the credit for hav- 
ing remedied. So they took the main features 
of our defeated charter, worked them over in 
their own way, and of course found it easy to 
have their good work indorsed by the next 
legislature. Thus sane and sound measures for 


132 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


reform may win substantial results, even from 
their initial defeat. Hysterical or overdone mea- 
sures of reform are likely to do more harm 
than good. 

The other instance was the fight which we 
made in the legislature to obtain sufficient law 
to enable us to suppress pool-rooms where 
horse-races were played in close proximity to 
Yale University. We introduced a bill to close 
such pool-rooms, and we limited it specifically 
to betting outside the race-courses. We did 
not undertake to suppress betting on horse- 
racing at every track throughout the State of 
Connecticut. We struck at the specific evil of 
pool-room gambling and, so far as our bill was 
concerned, no further. We knew that was evil 
enough to attack at one time. We soon found 
that we had not only the interests of the Char- 
ter Oak Race Park in Hartford against us, but 
also the gambling interests and money from 
New York determined to defeat any such legis- 
lation. Our only hope was to awaken the whole 
countryside in our behalf. We received some 
expert advice from one of the adepts in the art 
of carrying through railroad legislation. We 
had not, indeed, and could not have used his 
means of persuasion, but we could adopt with 
good conscience and follow some of his advice, 
such as the following. From his own experience 
he advised me not to be content with sending 
our documents up to the desks of the legislators, 


WORK IN NEW HAVEN 133 


but to mail them to the home addresses of the 
legislators in ample season for their wives and 
daughters, who would have seen them on 
Saturday night, to talk them over with the 
members of the legislature when they came 
home. Making it thus a family matter, we 
found did aid us in arousing the moral senti- 
ment of the people throughout the countryside. 
Another advice which he gave us was to get 
one or two men in each town to call on their 
representative at home and talk to him about 
it. We covered the entire State with letters for 
that purpose. And we got the country churches 
also interested in it. One such church—a Meth- 
odist one, I believe—happened to be located on 
a corner where the lines of four townships 
crossed. Accordingly, making the most of their 
favorable situation, they passed a resolution 
enjoining the representatives of all four towns 
to support the proposed law. I was amused one 
day on my way to the Capitol, at Hartford, to 
be greeted by the representative of one coun- 
try town, who informed me that considerable 
interest seemed to be getting up in our pool- 
room law, as several individuals in his place had 
come and spoken to him of it. Of course I was 
interested to know it, though not surprised. 
We finally carried the bill through the House by 
a sufficient though narrow margin. We had 
been obliged to stir up the better moral senti- 
ment of the whole State to accomplish it. Had 


134 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


we confined ourselves merely to our hearings 
before the Judiciary Committee we never should 
have come near that result. 

One other feature of this fight is well worth 
recording and commending to any reformers 
who may attempt to secure, at one stroke, re- 
formatory legislation in some desirable direction 
—it 1s not wise to attempt to make law too far 
beyond what, at the time, the people generally 
are ready to have enforced. Shortly before our 
bill was to come up before the legislature, a 
member of the Judiciary Committee, in his de- 
sire to suppress horse-racing generally in the 
country, proposed the insertion of an amend- 
ment which would have made the law so gen- 
eral and drastic that we feared that, even if it 
could be passed then, it might easily be repealed 
by the next legislature, or at least practically 
nullified. So we ourselves had to appear against 
any extreme extension of our measure, and to 
prevent to a considerable degree its being made 
too drastic. We had succeeded, however, in 
getting up such a sentiment against gambling 
that we feared some amendment prohibiting 
all horse-racing might be proposed on the floor 
of the house and possibly kill the whole bill. 
To provide against such unhappy contingency 
we had ourselves prepared a less drastic bill 
and had given it in keeping to a representative 
to present if it should become necessary. I 
suspected, at the time, that the gambling in- 


WORK IN NEW HAVEN 135 


terests might vote for the impractical, over- 
done amendment in order to cause the whole 
bill finally to be cast out; and in a friendly con- 
versation which I had afterward with the chief 
manager of the pool-room business in New 
Haven, he told me that he himself, foreseeing 
our possible victory, had had that sweeping 
amendment drawn up, either to defeat by it 
the whole of it or, if it passed, to render it pos- 
sible to get it repealed at the next session of the 
legislature. I felt justified in a remark which I 
had made at a hearing, that there were two 
enemies, often, of reformative measures of 
legislation: one was the bad man opposed to 
it, the other the pig-headed good men advo- 
cating it. One thing—the one thing needed at 
the time—was enough, at least in our judgment, 
for us. Some effort, indeed, at the next legis- 
lature was made to vacate she law of its force, 
but that went not far, and that statute has 
stood ever since and has shown, in repeated in- 
stances, that it is capable of enforcement. 

At the time when the boycott was becoming 
a much-agitated question in labor relations, I 
was invited by the trades-union of New Haven 
to speak to them on that and other labor mat- 
ters then under agitation. Of course, the usual 
quiz followed the lecture. I found it to be a 
very interesting experience, and I had no reason 
to complain of the fair treatment which I re- 
ceived, as I was also somewhat surprised that in 


136 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


their vote of acknowledgment to the speaker 
they thanked me for my courage in coming 
there and speaking to them. I had not foreseen 
where the courage came in, but their leaders 
evidently were determined to see that I re- 
ceived a fair hearing. 

Afterward I kept up, for some time, an extra- 
parish acquaintance in those quarters, and I 
found that this gave me an unusual opportunity 
at times for the exercise of a peacemaking in- 
fluence behind the scene, as well as of learning, 
from closer touch, the worker’s psychology. 
During the progress and final settlement of a 
threatened strike on the New Haven Railroad, 
the issue then in controversy was concerned 
with a readjustment of wages, and it involved 
the recognition of the labor-unions. One of the 
chief officers of the railroad unions had been 
called in to act for the men, and I had sought 
for an introduction to him from some of the 
local leaders, which they saw that I had, almost 
immediately after his arrival. The controversy 
continued for some two weeks, during which 
he would come to see me almost every evening 
in my study, to get away, as he said, from the 
men for a while, and to consider things quietly. 
I learned a great deal from him. He was ex- 
ceedingly anxious to avert a strike. “I know,” 
he would say, ‘‘what it means to the men and 
their families, how much of a drain also it 
would be on their insurance funds,” which he 


WORK IN NEW HAVEN 137 


was particularly desirous to save for their bene- 
fit. He himself was willing to settle on what he 
regarded as an equitable adjustment of their 
differences—his original figures being less than 
those at which, afterward, the company de- 
cided to compromise. The longer the threat- 
ened strike was at issue the more insistent the 
men became, and the more difficult it grew for 
him to hold them down to terms which he 
deemed reasonable. He was most anxious lest 
some unauthorized strike in the yards should 
precipitate a general strike. He said that he 
would not ask the railroad directors to recog- 
nize him as an officer of the union, but he desired 
by himself, or with others, to lay his figures 
and reasons before them. As the days of inde- 
cision passed I would ask him, in those inter- 
views with me after dark, what he could do 
next to avert the strike. He seemed fertile in 
resources. [ had an understanding with him 
that if at any time the affair should come to a 
crisis when he could obtain no more from the 
oficers of the company, and could no longer 
hold the men in abeyance, he should let me 
know, and I would myself carry any message 
which he might wish to the president of the 
road. One morning he telephoned me that he 
had got from the men the lowest terms that he 
could, which he deemed fair, and that, unless 
they were made the basis of final settlement, 
he could do nothing to prevent the men from_ 


138 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


striking at once. Immediately I took the mes- 
sage straight to the residence of the president, 
who was a parishioner and friend of mine. Al- 
though he received me of course courteously, I 
felt that he thought the men were seeking to 
make a tool of me; so after informing him that 
I could not remember the complicated figures 
to convey them to him, and that all I had to 
do with it was to repeat the telephone word that 
had come to me, I left him and went about my 
business. I confess I felt a little inward satis- 
faction when, some two hours afterward, my 
telephone rang up with an urgent message from 
the president’s office, inquiring if I was at home 
and if I would come at once to his office. After 
some repeating there to officials in consultation 
of what I knew, they decided to ask me to go 
and get, if I could, the paper which had been 
shown me containing those figures. As the busi- 
ness seemed urgent, I threw aside all efforts to 
avoid the newspaper men and others, who had 
frequently questioned me. I have often since 
then taken pleasure in recalling how, neverthe- 
less, I succeeded on that message of importance 
in avoiding the whole alert number of reporters. 
I had to go up to the headquarters of the local 
union, knock at their well-guarded door, call 
out two of their officials, impart to them my 
errand and then, in company with them, enter 
a near-by dry-goods store, while one of them 
used the public telephone to locate the man I 


WORK IN NEW HAVEN 139 


must see; and then to walk with them down the 
street toward the railroad-station to find the 
man in the lobby of his hotel, with the figures 
in his pocket, and in a whispered interview be- 
hind a convenient screen unobserved, have 
him slip those papers into my pocket, and then 
to walk directly across to the railroad offices 
and deliver the papers at the president’s office. 
And not a single newspaper man, although they 
were all around, happened to get track of me, 
or knew what was up! 

As a matter of fact, it was not long after 
that that the whole available force of the Yellow 
Building, the railroad’s headquarters, was set 
to work over the estimates based on those 
figures, and from Saturday afternoon over 
Sunday they were kept at it, preparing the esti- 
mates to be laid before the directors at their 
meeting on Monday. The night before their 
decision was expected I asked the labor official 
what, if anything more, he could possibly do 
to prevent the strike if the directors refused his 
terms. He walked silently once or twice across 
my room, and then suddenly turned to me and 
said: “I will send a telegram to J. P. Morgan, 
and offer to submit it wholly to his award, if he 
will personally undertake to examine it and 
act as arbitrator between us.” I uttered an 
exclamation of surprise, and then said, “I 
think Morgan would act fairly,” to which he 
assented. I wondered whether he really meant 


140 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


it; but the next morning, while those informed 
were waiting for the decision, and orders had 
been given for the strike to be immediately de- 
clared if the decision should be unacceptable, 
I met him and asked how about that telegram. 
He pulled out a telegraph blank from his pocket 
and let me read it. It was a straightforward 
message to J. P. Morgan, making to him the 
offer of arbitration. He said: “I shall go im- 
mediately to the telegraph office and send that 
despatch if the directors decide against us.” I 
could hardly help feeling some regret that the 
directors wisely came to a decision which ren- 
dered that telegram unnecessary. It would cer- 
tainly have been a novel precedent in labor con- 
troversies. So near to a strike affecting the 
whole New Haven system had it come, on that 
morning, that I desired to know whether a 
lady friend, who wished to stop over in New 
Haven that evening, but who must be in New 
York the next morning, could do so, and he 
told me any train that she might get on, bound 
for New York that night, would go through, 
but he could not guarantee that she could get 
to New York the next day. Happily the direc- 
tors compromised on his figures, the strike was 
called off, at the cost, however, of considerably 
more expense to the road than if a more con- 
ciliatory attitude had been accorded the men 
at the outset. 

I regretted at the time that the personal re- 


WORK IN NEW HAVEN I4I 


lations and involvements in the matter were of 
so confidential a nature that I could not write 
out in full all that [ had known and learned 
from it. It might have been a profitable story 
for further occasions. One thing, however, for 
the benefit of the clergy I learned, and subse- 
quent observation of their utterances and efforts 
in regard to labor controversies has tended to 
confirm it. A clergyman can often do better 
service by not letting himself loose in denuncia- 
tions from his pulpit prematurely, or figuring 
too ostensibly in the course of the controversy, 
but by quietly gaining what acquaintance with 
leaders of working men he may naturally have 
opportunity to gain, and holding himself in 
readiness, whenever opportunity may offer, 
quietly to use his position and personal influ- 
ence in ways of peace with all concerned. 

One other incident of minor importance in 
which I happened to play a small part may be 
recalled as indicative of the inconspicuous yet 
possibly useful service a clergyman may render 
in such matters. A strike had been called on 
the street-railway system of New Haven. A 
committee of the Board of Commerce had been 
hastily called to meet the men and seek for an 
agreement. While they were in session I had 
somewhat aimlessly loitered around, this time 
with newspaper reporters, as I then had nothing 
to do with it, saying to them, if they would give 
me any information that they might pick up 


142 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


which might be useful, I would reciprocate by 
telling them anything I might find out. I owe 
it, I think, somewhat to them that shortly 
after one of those citizens, in conference with 
the men, found me out among the onlookers, 
and told me that they were about to agree on 
certain terms of adjustment, which he gave 
me, and asked me to hasten to the officers of 
the company, saying he would keep the work- 
ers’ committee back for an hour in order to give 
the directors time to prepare their minds to 
receive the men rightly. I went forthwith to 
the office, and immediately called up the com- 
pany’s lawyer, and also exercised, unasked, the 
privilege of calling a meeting forthwith of the 
directors. There was one phrase of the terms 
that needed, I heard, some ironing out, which 
their skilful counsel immediately did before 
presenting it; and then it was decided by the 
directors to accept it, and the men’s committee 
appeared. I was taking my departure when the 
president, also a parishioner of mine, invited 
me to stay. With much suavity and gracious- 
ness of manner he discussed the terms with the 
men, and told them that now he would wipe 
off the slate and begin anew. “Are you satis- 
fied?” I asked their leader as they went out. 
“Yes,” he said, “we are, if we can persuade 
those men down there in their hall waiting for 
us.’ With some anxiety I followed them down, 
and after a few moments I knew from the cheer 


WORK IN NEW HAVEN 143 


that went up that the strike was off. That 
evening, after a complete tie-up for two days, 
New Haven had a celebration quite character- 
istic of a university town. The company put on 
all its cars and good-naturedly offered the peo- 
ple that night free rides up and down their 
lines; and the people thronged the streets, 
kindled bonfires here and there, and had a 
general jubilation. There is a lot of good nature 
lying round loose among people generally if it 
can only be touched off right. 


CHAPTER VIII 
MY BOOKS 


HAVE just arranged all my books together 
on a shelf in the order in which they were 
published. As I glance over them my first 
thought is to wonder how I ever found time to 
write them. I could not have done so had they 
not sprung spontaneously out of my own men- 
tal life, and taken form and expression in my 
preparation for meeting in the pulpit the needs 
of the people for reassurance and illumination 
of their faith. The old dogmatisms were dis- 
solving and new teachings of the Spirit coming. 
Their light was already dawning on the higher 
Christian scholarship. It was time to bring it 
down to the people. As I now glance through 
them my books seem to me to bear witness not 
merely to my own seeking and finding new 
meanings and fresh reassurances of faith, but 
also—which is of more significance—they seem, 
to me at least, to represent somewhat the pro- 
gressive advance of Christian thought and the- 
ology during the past fifty years. It has been 
a signal period of reconstruction of theologies 
and of the scientific reassurance of a faith that 
can be preached to the people. 
The origin of my first book, “The Religious 
_ Feeling,” was an attempt to bring to clear ex- 
144 


MY BOOKS 145 


pression my own faith as I found it after my 
studies in Germany. I would find the grounds 
of my faith not in so many inherited ideas, 
packed away in our minds; I would find them 
in the life that was in the world from the be- 
ginning, and which has come to self-conscious- 
ness in us, springing up in ever fresh spiritual 
reassurance. As I now glance through this book 
I find little that I would alter, although much 
might be added from the results of later psy- 
chological investigations and the new realism 
of our present time. 

It is now many years since I have taken down 
from the book-shelves my early volume, ‘‘Old 
Faiths in New Light.” I read now its purpose 
in these opening words of its preface: ‘‘I would 
read the old faiths, which I still believe, in the 
light of modern science, to which I cannot be 
blind. I would help others, if possible, to walk 
still in the old ways which prophets and apos- 
tles have trod, but in the light of to-day.” 
From a revised edition, issued ten years later, 
I may quote the following sentence as indicat- 
ing the advance of science and religious thought 
which at that time was already being made: 
“Since then (its first publication) the progress 
of historical researches and of Biblical scholar- 
ship and the advance of evolutionary science 
have opened still deeper knowledge toward the 
beginnings of things.” I recall this as indicating 
how the new day for Christian faith and preach- 


146 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


ing was at that time already dawning. This 
volume I have since then, after repeated edi- 
tions, allowed to pass out of print, as at many 
points it would need to be rewritten to make 
it a modern book, so great has been the increase 
of knowledge and new light within the short 
period since then. But the many letters which 
came to me at that time, especially from men 
whose minds were thrown into confusion by 
the shocks of new knowledge, and who found 
in that book help and leading in their time of 
spiritual need, are to me now as precious re- 
wards of my earlier ministry, and I myself may 
now be their pupil as they have found still new 
light breaking forth over the old faiths. 

Two volumes of sermons, published in the 
years 1894 and 1897, in the earlier years of my 
pastorate in New Haven, had their origin in 
my preparation to meet the needs of troubled 
believers, especially some in my congregation 
who might be described as doubters who would 
be believers. This seemed to require of the 
minister who would meet their religious uncer- 
tainties the double task of being conservative 
of religious values, and at the same time ethi- 
cally and scientifically true. 

My audience in New Haven included at that 
time students of divinity upon whom were 
suddenly thrust the new questionings of Bibli- 
cal scholarship as well as of philosophical agnos- 
ticism. ‘To some such it may have seemed, when 


MY BOOKS 147 


they were met by these questions in their semi- 
nary studies, as though they had fallen among 
thieves of their faith. The dogmatists passed 
them by on the other side, and they needed the 
aid of some good theological Samaritan. These 
sermons, as I now look at them, have to me 
also a certain personal interest as indicating 
how I myself had been led along in my think- 
ing and believing. In order to keep the faith 
of my childhood’s home was I to be driven back 
into the closed systems, safe and sound, of the 
old theologies, or in the open field of science 
and religion was there to be won a new victory 
for Christian faith? Could I find for myself 
a theology that could be preached? It must be 
one of the Spirit and the Life. Its method 
must not be controversial, but constructive. It 
should not undervalue the need of exact think- 
ing or of careful definitions, so far as defini- 
tions may be helps, stepping-stones as it were, 
to further pursuit of truth, but not points of 
arrested progress. 

This desire to escape from the nominalism of 
theological teaching, and to help the doubts and 
difficulties of thoughtful hearers by seeking to 
interpret the Christian faith by what is real in 
our experience of life, as well as true to our in- 
creasing knowledge of nature, is indicated by 
the titles of several of the sermons in one of 
these volumes, “‘The Reality of Faith,” such * 
as: “‘God’s Self-Revelation through Life,” 


148 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


“Ultimates of Knowledge and Beginnings of 
Faith,” “Real Christianity,’ ‘‘Knowledge of 
Self through Christ,’ “‘The Permanent Ele- 
ments of Faith,” “Life a Prophecy,” and others 
on the “Christlikeness of God,” and “‘ Knowl- 
edge of Ourselves through Christ.” 

In the sermon on “ Real Christianity” appears 
something of the newer view of the social ser-. 
vice of the church which has since become pre- 
dominant, and also of the larger view of the 
whole church for humanity which now is the 
challenge of the civilization of the world to 
Christianity. In the sermon on “The Perma- 
nent Elements of Faith” are almost the only 
allusions to be found in my preaching at that 
time to the question of a future probation, over 
which so much needless controversy had arisen. 
I had myself ceased to think of little children 
and the men and women to whom I was called 
to preach the gospel as so many probationers, 
under suspended sentence, let out on parole 
for this life or any other upon their good be- 
havior. All of us seemed to me those for whom 
~ Christ had died and for whom He would do 
all that the love of God through Him might do 
in any world to save us from our own destruction 
in sin. For me all the Scriptures, and whatever 
His disciples have reported of the words of 
Jesus, are to be interpreted in the spirit of 
Christ, not in any bondage to the reported 
letter, but in accordance with His whole gospel. 


MY BOOKS 149 


I find evidence in ‘“‘Christian Facts and \ 
Forces,” the other of these volumes of sermons, 
of my increasing interest during these earlier 
years of my ministry in social problems, which 
then were rarely made topics for pulpit discus- 
sion, though in these later days they have be- 
come current matters for consideration in our 
churches. I find this indicated in passages in 
these sermons on such topics as these: ‘‘The 
Church for Humanity,” “The Church to Meet 
Present Social Problems,” ‘‘The Rights of Men 
in the Communion of the Church.” And also 
the same note as to moral reality: “What Chris- 
tianity Is,” “‘Practical Ideas of Christianity,” 
““A Real Theology,” “The Rights of Men in the 
Churches.” 

In the earlier years of my ministry in New 
Haven I became acquainted with some of the 
younger people who had been brought up un- 
der the influence of the older doctrinal teachings 
concerning personal conversion and faith whose 
inquiring minds it was impossible to bring to 
anchorage upon the old orthodoxy from which 
they were drifting away. They might have as- 
sented to doctrinal statements and reasonings, 
but they would not have gained from them the 
faith in which they could have grown strong to 
meet the needs of their oncoming lives. It 
seemed to me that what they needed most was 
to be guided into some way in which they might 
work out for themselves their Christian beliefs. 


150 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


If they could find for themselves a beginning 
and a way of reaching a personal faith, then 
they might follow it out to a religious assurance 
which, because it was their own, henceforth no 
one could take from them. There were also 
some among the elderly people who needed to 
discover new ways of thinking and believing to 
prevent their own religious beliefs from. becom- 
ing stale and perfunctory. Their habits of be- 
lieving needed to be simplified and revitalized, 
but how could the preacher help to do this? It 
seemed to me that this could not be done effec- 
tively by a series of dogmatic sermons, even 
though I should endeavor to set forth in fresher 
forms the doctrines, one after another, of the 
creeds of the church. But possibly, so it seemed, 
by raising the question, ‘‘How may one gain 
for himself a personal creed?” and by seeking 
to show how one might follow a method for 
himself to some simpler assurance of the great 
truths of the Christian life—a method could be 
found which might prove more fruitful in the 
thought and religious experience of such listen- 
ers IN my congregation. 

Accordingly, in a book called ‘Personal 
Creeds,” the first sermon was entitled “‘ Moral 
Beginnings.” In it I said: “The first thing to 
do if we really wish to gain a creed for ourselves 
is to go and hunt through our experience until 
we come to something, however simple, before 
which we must and do say, I see that to be 


MY BOOKS ISI 


true, I believe that, I can trust in that. And 
this I insist is the first thing for a man in search 
of a creed to do—to find something somewhere 
which he does believe; not to believe in every- 
thing, but to find something, however elemental, 
which his own life has proved to be true to 
him.” “A young man cannot begin to be a 
true man until at some point his life takes root 
in the moral realities.” In a subsequent chap- 
ter [ sought to apply this method to some of 
the most vital and essential beliefs of Christi- 
anity. The concluding chapter was entitled: 
“Points of Contact between This Life and the 
Next.” 

This little book found a ready and continu- 
ous sale, and letters which I received from many 
sources confirm me in my conviction that its 
method is simple, helpful, and true. Indeed, it 
is adopted now in many of the best and most 
helpful religious books. In this way I was only 
a pioneer. 

In the pursuit of biological studies which the 
laboratories of Yale had opened to me, I had 
become interested in Weissman’s theories of 
heredity, and particularly in his speculation 
concerning the natural immortality of the sim- 
plest unicellular organism. Experiments had 
shown that life may be continued from one cell 
to another by coalescence and rejuvenation for 
several hundred generations without the occur- 
rence of any body of death. How, when, and 


152 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


why did death enter into the process of life? 
The experiments which Weissman used in sup- 
port of his views of heredity have since then 
been carried much farther in the Yale Biological 
Laboratory, and it has been shown that with 
proper care and by renewing the external con- 
ditions of sustenance such primitive life may 
be continued, in an indefinite number of suc- 
cessions, so far as the experimenters may care 
to follow them. All Weissman’s theories have 
not been accepted by later biologists; but it is 
an interesting and fruitful suggestion that death 
has entered into nature as an element and part 
of the process of life itself, and has served the 
ends of larger and richer life. Were it not for 
death we might still be circling round and round 
in the primitive unicellular existence. I thought 
that such biological investigations concerning 
the entrance and functioning of death might 
have some direct bearing upon the received 
theological teaching concerning the entrance of 
death into the personal life as a consequence 
of sin. Indeed, such biological facts and specu- 
lations concerning the place and function of 
death in the natural world opened to me an 
interesting speculation concerning the service 
of death as a step and means for the higher life 
of man and its possible unbroken continuity. 
I thought that such scientific inquiries might 
possibly cast some new gleams of light at least 
over this dark side of our theological thinking. 


MY BOOKS 153 


With this in mind, for the purpose, also, of 
calling attention to the as yet untrodden ways 
of theological inquiries which scientific studies 
of the elements and origins of things were open- 
ing, I prepared a small volume on “The Place 
of Death in Evolution.” In the light of later 
biological investigations and speculations, this 
book of mine might need now at some points 
to be revised as well as enlarged, but as I look 
over now its contents and speculative reason- 
ings, I must still regard it as throwing a cross- 
light, at least, over the shadow of death. After 
the years which have passed since this venture 
of faith was made, I may repeat now these 
words from the preface of this book with even 
more reassurance. ‘‘ The pursuit of such studies 

. increases the conviction in which the vol- 
ume has been written, that new light is break- 
ing from evolutionary science, and that in that 
light we shall see coming out again more clearly 
and more surely the simple and immortal faiths 
of our human hearts and homes.” 

I was surprised by receiving from Professor ° 
Briggs a request that I should prepare a volume 
on “Christian Ethics” for a series of books which 
he was editing for ‘‘The International Theologi- 
cal Library.” The offer was a tempting one for 
me, as, during my studies in Germany, I had be- 
come interested in Rothe’s “Ethics,” and ac- 
quainted with Martensen’s and other volumes 
on Christian ethics. At that time our English 


1s4 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


theological literature was singularly deficient 
in books of that specific character. One had to 
resort to German books, few of which had been 
translated, for special studies of distinctively 
Christian ethics. With too scanty preparation 
for such a task, I hesitated to undertake it, 
although it attracted me and I felt the need of 
it in our theological literature and training. 
Not that we had been lacking in ethical preach- 
ing, but we had available no systematic treat- 
ment of Christian ethics as a whole. But trust- 
ing, in spite of myself, Professor Briggs’s choice 
of the author, and yielding to his persuasion, | 
ventured to undertake the task. Meanwhile, 
my weekly preparation for the pulpit had to be 
continued, besides other work both pastoral 
and civic. But some of this practical work and 
direct acquaintance with social and industrial 
needs may have been helpful for an insight into 
the ethics of Christianity for the people. The 
lessening of church work in the summer season, 
and my good health which enabled me to keep 
at my task during the hot weather, served to 
put me forward in this new undertaking; but 
most of my work on it had to be carried on at 
interrupted times, as I could find optortunity 
to turn from one thing to another. 

Since the publication of the work I have 
hardly glanced at it. It has been used some- 
what as a text-book, and once, I remember, I 
looked into it myself to see what I ought to 


MY BOOKS Isc 


think on a certain subject. I was somewhat 
pleased when once in England a theological 
student informed me that he had just passed a 
successful examination in it. I told him I was 
afraid that was more than I could do. I was 
surprised when I was informed that a shop- 
keeper in Wales had read it through. Christian 
social ethics has now become almost a pre- 
dominating subject of religious writings; but 
there is still need that industrial and social 
ethics should be studied and taught as part and 
substance of the whole body of Christian faith 
and doctrine. 

I remember coming home one day from the 
biological laboratory at Yale, where I had been 
taught to prepare slides for microscopic exami- 
nation, and with such a slide of the egg of one of 
the humblest of worms on which the elemental 
processes of cell-division were made visible 
under the microscope, I exclaimed to my fam- 
ily that I had the whole mystery of life on a 
bit of glass. And my wonder grows, the more 
we know of the elements of life. What would 
Bishop Butler have written in his “Analogy,” 
what might Jonathan Edwards have noted 
down on the first scrap of paper he might have 
laid his hands on, if they could have seen with 
their own eyes as much as is now revealed to 
us of the divine mystery of our human begin- 
nings ! 

An invitation which came to me to deliver 


156 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


the Lowell Lectures in 1900-1901 offered to me 
an opportunity to gather up my _ biological 
studies and to think over my faiths in the light 
of the researches of the biologists. These lec- 
tures were afterward published in a book en- 
titled ““Through Science to Faith.” This vol- 
ume was later reprinted in a new edition in 1913. 

It was by accident that I first became inter- 
ested in the Modernist movement in the Roman 
Catholic Church. In looking over the shelf of 
new books in the library at Yale, I chanced 
upon a small book entitled “‘What We Want.” 
At first glance I thought it was some socialist 
publication. I had read but a few pages before 
it seemed to me like the opening of a new win- 
dow and a wider prospect for the whole church. 
I began at once to seek further information re- 
garding it. It was thus that Father Tyrrell’s 
ardent plea for larger scientific freedom in the 
Roman church came to my attention, and after 
that I read with avidity his books as they ap- 
peared, one after another. His was like the 
voice of one crying in the wilderness of our 
modern confusions, and laying an axe at the 
root of old dogmatisms. 

The opening of new possibilities for the whole 
church, made by this appeal of the authors of 
“What We Want,” led me to write my book, 
“Passing Protestantism and Coming Catholi- 
cism,” which was published in March, 1902. 
Although the names of the authors of ‘What 


MY BOOKS 157 


We Want” were concealed, they themselves 
were speedily put under the papal ban. Through 
the kindness of a friend in Italy I obtained the 
means of carrying on a correspondence with 
one of them. A report of a sermon, which I had 
preached concerning the movement, had been 
printed in one of the religious papers and sub- 
sequently it had appeared in a new Modernist 
magazine which had been issued at Rome. 
The number in which my utterance had ap- 
peared was put on the “Index” by the pope, 
and all the contributors to it included under 
the papal ban. 

This book of mine drew fire from many 
Protestants, some of whom seemed to have gone 
no farther than the title before their wrath 
was kindled; and some of the letters which they 
made haste to send me occasioned me no little 
amusement. One, from an unbalanced man 
from the West, advised me to go out and sit 
down under the shadow of a rock and meditate! 
Another, who called himself a prophet from the 
Lord, summoned me to go over to Scotland 
and receive a message from him. But I have 
no reason to complain of the general interest 
which it awakened. Especially gratifying and 
helpful was a letter received from Doctor Mor- 
gan, the rector of Christ Church in New Haven, 
who told me that on reading one sentence, in 
which I had said, ‘The first move toward 
unity must be made by the Episcopal Church,” 


158 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


he had felt that it required a response from the 
Episcopal Church, and that he had written to 
Bishop Brewster and offered to him the use of 
his chapel if he would invite me to speak before 
the clergy of his diocese. In reading the proof 
of that sentence I had thought that it might 
seem rather presumptuous in me to put it in 
that way, and was about to strike the words 
out when [ said to myself: ‘‘No, I must let 
them stand.” That proved to be the beginning 
of friendly conference and correspondence be- 
tween us,afterward. The title which startled 
some seemed at least a key which opened the 
lock. 

A little book called ‘‘Modern Belief in Im- 
mortality”? had its origin in a lecture which I 
was invited to give on the New Foundation at 
Hackney College of the University of London. 
Most of the books written for edification con- 
cerning the life hereafter dwell entirely on the 
moral argument or rest simply on faith in the 
Biblical assurance of immortality. It seemed to 
me that if we went as far back as knowledge of 
life from its elemental beginnings, we should 
find signs and evidences of the possible con- 
tinuance of our personal life through death and 
beyond it. I sought to bring out what may be 
called the natural prophecy of personal immor- 
tality, and on that to reaffirm our faith in the 
Scriptural teaching, and possibly also to yield 
helpful conceptions of the future life in worlds 


MY BOOKS 159 


unrealized as yet. The germinal thoughts pre- 
sented in this lecture are more fully worked out 
in my last volume on “The Meaning of Per- 
sonal Life.” 

Often during the later years of my ministry 
there would come to me not only a quickening 
of thought on familiar themes but a refresh- 
ing reassurance of faith as I seemed to grasp 
some great principle of creative life running 
from the beginnings of things on and up to its 
highest earthly attainment in man, and toward 
the future fulfilment of his destiny in the world 
beyond. Besides this, some painstaking ac- 
quaintance with laboratory work and scientific 
evidence seemed to me a needed discipline, es- 
pecially for the clergy in their practical work 
in contact with the social problems and reforma- 
tory work of the times. By such close studies 
and familiarity with the exactness of scientific 
experiments might be avoided the peril of too 
hasty theories, or of what is often very harmful 
to the reputation of a minister zealous in all 
public good works, the danger of falling into 
hasty or too sweeping statements for which he 
may have little evidence. Overstatement, even 
in urging moral reforms, may often cause a 
fatal collapse of one’s best intended utterances. 
Consequently I once asked Professor Chitten- 
den whether he might not offer a course in gen- 
eral biology to students of theology in the Yale 
Divinity School, especially for the benefit of 


160 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


those who had little or no opportunity in their 
previous education for such studies. This he 
willingly did, and the general resources of Yale 
in all departments may now be made available 
to special students. The movement of mind 
during the last quarter of a century has carried 
us beyond the old-time tasks of the reconcilia- 
tion of science and religion. There remains the 
happier work for theologians and preachers of 
the assimilation of science by religion. 

An invitation which I received from the Yale 
School of Religion, in 1913, to give the Nathaniel 
Taylor Lectures offered me an opportunity of 
presenting these convictions, and these lectures 
were published afterward under the title, “‘Con- 
structive Natural Theology.” The concluding 
lecture in this volume on “Scientific Spiritual- 
ity” is only a sketch of a subject that might be 
much more fully developed, but its main ob- 
ject, as stated in the last words in those lec- 
tures, was to secure more recognition, along 
with other types of religious experience, of a 
scientific habit of mind which should be dis- 
tinguished from agnosticism and recognized and 
welcomed in the church of God as scientific 
spirituality. I have had many occasions to 
know this mental attitude, and to find help to 
my own faith by discovering it among scientific 
men at Yale. 


CHAPTER Ix 
MODERNISM. TYRRELL 
FTER I had become interested in the 


Modernist movement in the Church of 

Rome through the chance finding of the 
small volume entitled ‘‘What We Want,” I 
began at once to seek for further information 
concerning it. Father Tyrrell’s vigorous pleas 
for larger liberty of thinking within the Church 
of Rome came to my notice, and subsequently 
I read his books, one after another, with great 
interest. As many articles and some publica- 
tions by friends of the Modernist movement 
were appearing in Italy, and were untranslated 
into English, I took up an Italian dictionary 
and grammar, and within a short time I found 
_ myself able to translate sufficiently to enable 
me at least to get at the course of thought pur- 
sued. Pamphlets in French and German, and 
books by Modernists began to multiply, and the 
papers abroad at times paid much notice to the 
movement, although hardly any notice of it 
was taken in the daily press or religious papers 
of this country. From a German bureau I suc- 
ceeded in obtaining many clippings concerning 
the progress of this movement and the measures 
taken by the papal authorities to suppress it, 
not only in Italy but also in Austria, affecting 

161 


162 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


in some instances the teachings in Catholic 
seminaries and in the universities. Indeed, at 
one time a culture war was threatened in Aus- 
tria, where university professors had been at- 
tacked by the Catholic party. As a result of 
this attempt to silence university teachers ac- 
cused of Modernism, in some instances strikes 
of the student body against such interference 
with academic liberty had been occasioned, 
and in one instance a university had to be 
closed until the matter had been compromised. 

These Roman priests who laid their appeal 
before the pope had no thought of abandoning 
their allegiance to the Catholic Church, no de- 
sire to be schismatics. In one of their earliest 
utterances, so they tell us, they “had adopted 
the name Modernists solely in order that it 
may be understood by the people and because 
the pope had accredited it; we prefer to define 
our religious attitude simply as Christians and 
Catholics, living in harmony with the spirit 
of their time.” * 

In July, 1907, a papal syllabus condemning 
sixty-nine errors in the teachings of the Modern- 
ists was issued. This was followed up by the 
full power of the Vatican in an effort to exter- 
minate in the church these errors, and to cut 
off from the church all who were persistent in 
holding to them. This period has been char- 


*“Passing Protestantism,” etc., p. 41; “Il programme dei 
Modernisti,” p. 5. 


MODERNISM 163 


acterized, by some who had intimate knowledge 
of the deprivations, poverty, and hardships oc- 
casioned by it, as a time comparable with the 
days of terror of the French Revolution, when 
to be in any ways eminent was to be a suspect. 
It has also been compared with the days of witch- 
baiting and trials, when men became accusers 
in order themselves to escape accusation, and 
to be accused was to be condemned.* A Protes- 
tant may hardly realize what it must mean to 
a life-long devout Roman Catholic to be for- 
bidden the sacrament and to be excommuni- 
cated by the church. But not a few of those 
Modernists did not recant, even though it meant 
for them that supreme sacrifice. Others escaped 
delation by remaining silent. 

One who would understand the spirit pre- 
vailing in the so-called Modernist movement, 
not only within the Roman church but gener- 
ally in recent times, may find it revealed in the 
life and writings of George Tyrrell. His mind 
was like a mirror reflecting the changing phases 
of the religious world, its outstanding forms, 
its overshadowing doubts, and openings also 
of light from above. He writes of himself: “I 
became an agnostic at ten... . As soon as I 
ceased merely to repeat the formulas of re- 
ligion, and began to translate them into reali- 
ties, the whole thing vanished from me as Jack 
and the Beanstalk, not by reflex reason, but 

* See Petre, “Life of Tyrrell,” p, 290. 


164 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


because there seemed to be no object to lay 
hold of.” Throughout his whole life and its 
changing positions he would discover the reali- 
ties. In the year before his life-search for the 
realities of faith ended he wrote to Baron von 
Hugel: “I believe religion will re-embody itself. 
But none of these old bottles will do. Nor can 
we make a new one. It will grow, but we shall 
have forty years in the desert between Egypt 
and Jerusalem.” He died, as he had lived, in 
the expectation of the universal church of the 
future. Catholic authority could not allow him 
place of burial without recantation. This he 
had not done, and when in his last hour this 
was told him he simply lifted his hand. Cath- 
olic authority would not allow him a burial on 
consecrated ground; but his friends found a 
place of burial for him between the Church of 
England and the Abbey Church, and an old 
friend, an abbot, would not suffer him to be 
laid at rest without reciting the last Catholic 
prayer and blessing his grave. They opened his 
last will and testament, and found therein these 
words: “I was a Catholic priest, and bear the 
emblematic chalice and host.’”? In the history 
of the Modernist movement Tyrrell became an 
outstanding figure—a revealer of its spirit, a 
confessor of its deepest need, a champion of its 
freedom, the prophet of its vision, its martyr 
in his death. 

There is an instructive resemblance between 
the Modernist movement as illustrated in the 


MODERNISM 165 
life of Tyrrell and the so-called New Theology 


during the same period in New England as well 
as generally throughout Protestantism. Epochs ° 
in church history are not created by the men who 
become their representatives. Reformations 
in the life and thought of the church have their 
springs in the far uplands of spiritual experi- 
ence; as from many sources far inland in the 
springtime the rivers, breaking loose from their 
worn channels, flow down in a flood to the sea. 
The Modernist movement in the Roman Cath- 
olic Church was an outbreak at a few points 
here and there of the scientific and religious 
knowledge and thought of the incoming new age. 
It is much the same movement which has over- 
flowed and broken loose from the inherited 
dogmatisms of the Protestant world. Some 
among us may still look upon it with amazing 
forebodings as though it would carry away like 
a flood our established beliefs, leaving a dreary 
waste behind it. But the whole history of the 
Spirit of the Lord in the renewals of Christian 
life and thought justifies no such gloomy fore- 
bodings. It may, indeed, at times and places 
carry away values that may need to be recov- 
ered; but as a moving of the churches in the 
Spirit of the Lord it comes not to destroy but 
to fulfil. In the Roman church as a revolu- 
tionary, or rather, we should say, an evolution- 
ary, movement it has been suppressed. But 
much waits beneath the surface until its hour 
of revealing shall come. 


166 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


Tyrrell had been thoroughly educated in the 
scholastic. theology, and had been a teacher 
and lecturer upon it. So also the New Eng- 
land divines who became known as liberals or 
progressive teachers and preachers, had been 
thoroughly trained in the received dogmatic 
theology of their time. They, like Tyrrell, were 
suspected and denounced as destroyers of the 
faith once delivered to the saints. The upland 
source of ‘Tyrrell’s religious renewal was his dis- 
covery of what he calls the Lex Orandi as the 
first principle of the Christian’s faith. The Lex 
Orandi was the derivative principle of Christian 
belief. The life of the Spirit of Christ in his 
disciples—the life of prayer and devotion—is the 
source and ever reformatory influence in the 
intellectual beliefs of the church. The creeds 
were not faith but attempts to formulate the 
intellectual beliefs of the church. During the 
earlier period of his life as a Jesuit Tyrrell had 
gained this conviction. ‘‘Devotion and religion 
existed before theology in the way that art ex- 
isted before art criticism.” * The Spirit of 
Christ rather than Christ himself is the creator 
of the church—or rather, the whole organism 
of pre- and post-Christian church, of which 
Christ is the Head, of which no part, not even 
Christ, exhausts the potentialities. T 


* “Tex Orandi,” p. 197. 
t From “The Church of the Future,” privately circulated in 
1892. 


MODERNISM 167 


Tyrrell speaks of the Catholic theological 
schools as the “great tyranny of the modern 
church, and not the least evil of their influence 
is that they have made Christ himself the first 
theologian.”* Such declarations as these, which 
are found recurring in his letters and books, are 
also applicable to the development of the Mod- 
ernist movement in New England and elsewhere 
among Protestants during the last half-cen- 
tury. “The creeds are not the life, but the 
attempt to formulate the beliefs of the church.” 
“The life of the Christ continued in the spirit 
_ and devotion of his disciples is primary; it is 
the source and ever fresh renewal of the intel- 
lectual beliefs of the church.” 

Of the first edition of his book, ‘Lex Orandi,” 
Tyrrell said: “The first edition is already sold 
out: the Index had better hurry.” A similar 
observation might be made of some Modernists’ 
books of Protestants in recent times. The eccle- 
siastical censors must hurry to keep up with 
them. The self-named Fundamentalists of 
these days should be more properly called the 
Superficialists. Advancing knowledge and pro- 
gressive faith can never fall too far apart. 
What God hath joined together in nature and 
in grace, let not man put asunder. . 


* Ibid., p. 1900. 


CHAPTER X 
CHURCH UNITY 


HE movement for church unity may be 
dated from the meeting of the Anglican 
bishops, in 1908, at Lambeth. | 

Following a preceding action of the Congre- 
gational churches of Connecticut in response 
to a declaration of that Lambeth company, the 
National Council of Congregational Churches 
at Boston, Mass., in 1910, took a responsive 
action and appointed a special committee “to 
consider any overtures that may come to our 
body from the Episcopal Church.” Simultane- 
ously the General Convention of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church, then in, session at Cincin- 
nati, Ohio, issued an appeal for “‘a World Con- 
ference on Faith and Order as a first step toward 
unity.” The Episcopal Convention appointed 
a commission to prepare plans and to carry 
forward these proposals for a world conference. 

This commission had before them the i1m- 
mediate task of planning and forwarding the 
work for the ultimate accomplishment of so 
vast an undertaking. They promptly orga- 
nized, and at one of their earliest meetings I 
was cordially invited to be present as represent- 
ing the Congregationalists, who had already 
taken in advance responsive action. ‘Their re- 

168 


CHURCH UNITY 169 


ception of me as though I were one of them- 
selves, which was given at that meeting, was 
one which I cherish among the grateful mem- 
ories of a lifetime. It was the beginning of in- 
creasing personal acquaintance with leaders of 
every school of thought in the Episcopal Church 
and of frequent participation in their confer- 
ences. From it has grown a voluminous corre- 
spondence in which various plans and proposals 
were freely discussed. One would fail to find 
through all these letters any expressions of the 
ecclesiastical inheritance of bitterness or de- 
nunciative temper toward others which too 
often has characterized religious controversies. 
Surely the lion and the lamb lie down together 
in these letter-files of mine. 

The work set before the Episcopal Commis- 
sion required first that they should extend their 
invitation far and wide to all other Christian 
communions. As most of these could respond 
only through action of their respective bodies, 
which usually met only annually and some less 
frequently, it was obvious that an indefinite 
period must elapse before ever the world con- 
ference could be assembled. This necessary part 
of preparation was at once taken up by Mr. 
Robert H. Gardiner, who consented to act as 
secretary. To this great venture of faith Mr. 
Gardiner gave his time, his means, his unfail- 
ing personal devotion in the highest Christian 
consecration. His unfailing patience, combined 


170 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


with promptness of action whenever possible, 
his faith which no difficulties could quench, his 
tact in meeting all kinds of difficulties, have laid 
the Christian world under indebtedness to him 
which should be gratefully acknowledged by 
those who seek for peace and unity of the 
churches. 

Suddenly after a few days’ illness, worn out 
by his unceasing labors, he was taken from us, 
to receive in the life beyond the Lord’s blessing 
upon the makers of peace. 

One of the first steps which the Episcopal 
Commission deemed it desirable to take was 
to secure the co-operation of the Church of 
England. For this purpose they sent over as 
early as practicable a deputation to confer with 
the authorities of that church. I have been 
told that on the first interview, after the dele- 
gation had presented the matter, there was an 
ominous silence and seemingly a rather cold 
reception of their proposals. One of the Anglican 
bishops broke the silence by saying that, in a 
matter of so grave concern, it was of the ut- 
most importance that they should go as slowly 
as possible. Whereupon one of the American 
bishops asked: ‘‘ What is the difference between 
going as slow as possible and not going at all?” 
The laughter which followed that American 
sally broke the ice, and they proceeded to a 
most friendly and gratifying conference. The 
archbishop appointed a representative com- 


CHURCH UNITY 171 


mittee to enter into further conference, which 
afterward became known as the Archbishop’s 
Commission. 

An important preliminary step was taken by 
the Episcopal Commission by inviting other 
commissions, as they might be appointed, to 
appoint from their number a committee to act 
with the Episcopal Commission as Joint Ad- 
visory Board. By the general consent of this 
advisory board the Episcopal Commission were 
asked to continue in the direction of the under- 
taking until the contemplated preparation for 
the ultimate assembling of the world confer- 
ence should be completed. At the first meeting 
of this advisory committee in May, 1913, the 
Episcopal Commission took another notable 
step. They asked that a delegation from the 
other commissions should be sent to the Non- 
conformist churches of Great Britain, to pre- 
sent the object and plans of the proposed world 
conference, and to secure, if possible, their ap- 
proval and co-operation in so great an under- 
taking. The Episcopal Commission graciously 
offered to pay out of their initial fund the ex- 
penses of such a delegation. This offer was 
thankfully accepted, and after final arrange- 
ments had been made, such a delegation, con- 
sisting of Doctor William H. Roberts, Doctor 
Peter Ainslie, and myself as chairman, sailed 
on December 29, 1913, from New York for 
Plymouth, England. 


172 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


Resolutions by the Connecticut State Confer- 
ence of the Congregational Churches, and also 
by the National Council of the Congregational 
Churches, had been adopted, commending us 
to their brethren in England. We regarded 
it as singularly fitting that, after these nearly 
three centuries of separation, we should land 
as messengers of reconciliation at Plymouth, 
from which our forefathers had departed from 
England. The particular time, however, seemed 
at first in one respect to be inauspicious for our 
mission, as the Anglican Church was then sur- 
charged with the Kikuyu missionary contro- 
versy in Africa. It had arisen over a missionary 
proposal for a measure of intercommunion be- 
tween the native Christians of the Anglican and 
other Protestant churches. The bishop of Zan- 
zibar was then on his way to protest against it 
to the archbishop of Canterbury. We thought, 
however, if we could guard ourselves from any 
reference to the matter in controversy as not 
one for us as Americans to take part in, the 
very interest excited by it, to which, indeed, 
the daily papers were giving much _ notice, 
might create an atmosphere favorable to our 
irenical message. So we were on our watch not 
to let any unguarded reference to it escape us 
in our interviews and conferences. We had 
hardly, however, stepped on the platform of 
the railway-station in London when a reporter 
of the London city press met us with the ques- 


CHURCH UNITY 173 


tion: “What have you to say about Kikuyu?” 
We were gratified the next morning when we 
read the London Times, to see as the headline 
over the interview: “Nothing to say about 
Kikuyu.” It is due to the fine courtesy which 
was universally shown us that, inasmuch as 
our position in purposely refraining from any 
distinctly English question was at once appre- 
ciated, in none of our frank conferences, where 
questions from all sides were asked and wel- 
comed by us, was a single allusion or effort made 
to draw us out on that matter. Their interest 
in it, however, had created for us a receptive 
atmosphere for our mission of peace—the aim 
and idea of the world conference being beyond 
all controversy. We found that the Free Church 
Council had prepared for us immediately after 
our arrival a large and most gratifying recep- 
tion. They gave us a banquet in behalf of the 
Free Churches, which was attended by more 
than a hundred leading men and official repre- 
sentatives of the Free Churches. This occasion 
alone was afterward characterized by Doctor 
Meyer and others as a historic gathering of 
British Nonconformity, and as marking a dis- 
tinct epoch in the life of the churches there. 
I may recall my impressions of it by quoting 
some sentences, from a letter to my wife, giv- 
ing an account of our reception. “It was an 
imposing affair, and it went off in great style; 
I had rather dreaded it, but we felt we did fine 


174. RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


team-work, and carried them enthusiastically 
with us. I am sure that Doctor Roberts and 
Ainslie did their parts most admirably, and they 
seem well satisfied with mine. I had the longer 
speech, an explanation of our plans to make. One 
had both to be cautious and yet to let himself 
go at the right points. One custom at the ban- 
quet afforded me some amusement—the to me 
novel way in which the speakers were announced 
by a majordomo who arose by the side of the 
chairman to call out the name of each speaker. 
He stood right behind me, a man with a big 
chest and a loud voice; and in a way that al- 
most blew my speech out of my head, he 
shouted: ‘Pray, gentlemen, silence—silence for 
Doctor Newman Smyth.’ However, I recov- 
ered myself and got going in acknowledging 
the salutations of the chairman.” 

A number of speeches were made by eminent 
representatives of different communions, and 
the papers gave gratifying reports of the occa- 
sion. After this opportunity to state in general 
the nature of our mission, we took up the next 
morning at once the task of meeting for con- 
ference, one after another of the official rep- 
resentatives of the several Free Church bodies. 
Reverend Tissington Tatlow, secretary of the 
Archbishop’s Commission and of the Students’ 
Commission, had arranged with the most care- 
ful details our tour for this object, and it was 
due to him that we were enabled to do so much 


CHURCH UNITY 17s 


in so short a time; one engagement following 
another with the most advantageous use of time 
as well as convenience for us. His wide experi- 
ence in the conduct of the Students’ movement 
had given him exceptional knowledge, and he 
spared neither time nor effort for our service. 
In our consultations with him we found also 
his advice of great advantage to us. We were 
thus enabled within the short time of twenty-one 
days on our tour through England and Scot- 
land to meet with thirty-one official groups in 
conference, and also we accepted twenty invi- 
tations of a social character for further con- 
ference with representative men. At each one 
of these meetings we had to make addresses 
and to answer many questions; some of the 
conferences were over two hours long, and we 
sometimes had three in one day. Besides these 
we had over a dozen important lunches and 
conversations, frequent interviews with news- 
paper reporters, and letters daily to answer. 
Our delegation received a cordial and de- 
lightful reception when we visited Edinburgh. 
The hospitality of the homes enabled us to 
meet in personal conversations well-known men 
whom we were glad to see. Then in the hall of 
the office-building of the Church of Scotland 
we met a large gathering composed of official 
representatives of the Church of Scotland, The 
United Free Church, The Presbyterian Church 
of Ireland, The Congregational Church, and 


176 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


other Scottish churches. The significance of 
such a gathering was indicated in remarks made 
by the well-known Reverend Principal Whyte, 
who said, in seconding a motion indorsing the 
proposed world conference: ““We may well be- 
lieve that, through the visit of our friends, that 
union nearer home, which is so much in the 
gracious, loving, prayerful hearts, will be ad- 
vanced. I am only speaking for myself when 
I say that since I came up this stair and sat 
down in this room I have felt thankful for this 
visit. It has for the first time brought me within 
the household and under the roof of our old 
Mother Church. I shall date the first time that 
I was invited within its walls to the day of the 
visit of our American friends.” Principal 
Whyte, it should be said, had been for years a 
familiar figure on the streets of Edinburgh as 
one of its most eminent preachers and pastors. 

Doctor Ainslie and I felt that Scotland was 
especially Doctor Roberts’s sphere of influence, 
so at this large meeting we put upon him the 
burden of making the principal speech. He 
had looked forward to this gathering, mainly 
of Presbyterians, with the greatest interest, and 
he was at his best on this occasion. Our hosts 
had a full stenographic report of the proceed- 
ings and speeches. 

Three of these conferences in England stand 
out in my memory as constituting a group by 
themselves of peculiar interest—one, the first 


CHURCH UNITY £77 


that we had after our arrival, was with a group 
of young men who had bound themselves to- 
gether, quietly and without observation, “‘in 
the light of new knowledge and scientific method 
to re-examine, and if need be to re-express for 
our own time the fundamental afirmations of 
the faith, desiring to cultivate a new spiritual 
fellowship and communion with all branches of 
the Christian Church.” I felt that there, in that 
little companionship of young men, was the sign 
and the hope of the future. Some of them have 
since been heard from and are now leading ex- 
ponents of the more enlightened thought and 
larger catholicity of England. It seemed to me 
a happy omen, and it gave to me a serener trust 
and confidence in all our subsequent confer- 
ences, that we had met first with that company 
of quiet, earnest disciples who would find and 
follow the leading of the Spirit of truth in our 
own day. The second of these groups with 
whom we met stood at the opposite extreme, 
“The Association for the Promotion of the 
Unity of Christendom,” of which Lord Halifax 
was one of the executive committee. It repre- 
sents the high-church movement, its declared 
purpose being “to unite in a bond of interces- 
sory prayer members both of clergy and laity 
of the Roman Catholic, Greek, and Anglican 
communions,” looking forward “for their heal- 
ing mainly to a corporate reunion of these three 
great bodies which claim for themselves the 


178 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


inheritance of the priesthood and the name of 
catholic.” At the invitation of Mr. Athelstan 
Riley, a prominent member of that society and 
an influential churchman, we met at his home, 
in London, a number of active members of that 
association. I may best describe this interest- 
ing conversational meeting by this extract from 
a letter of mine, written home just afterward: 
“This afternoon I have been quizzed for two 
hours by representatives of a High-Church, 
pro-Roman society, and I have had a most in- 
teresting time of it. They went into every- 
thing, and we had a full and frank discussion. 
Ainslie has been enthusiastic over my answers, 
and can hardly stop talking about it. He says 
they were so clear and convincing, going in 
concessions just far enough and not too far. 
I felt myself that I’ knew what was in their 
minds, and I had my eye on two representative 
men whom I wanted, if possible, to influence. 
I approached them in a way they had not an- 
ticipated by assuming their claim to hold a 
mediating position between Rome and Protes- 
tantism (which is their hobby); and then by 
asserting my belief that the coming reforma- 
tion in the Roman church will be the recovery 
of the lost powers of the Episcopate. To that 
they assented with hearty approval. And then 
I turned and said that the only possible media- 
tion for the Church of England will be not at 
one end of the Protestant line, but at the centre 


CHURCH UNITY 179 


of it with a reunited Protestantism behind them. 
So it went on, but it was keen work from be- 
ginning to end. It was a small but very rep- 
resentative body. If they could see things 
more broadly it would be an immense gain. 
But such conferences are as seed to which only 
the Spirit of the Lord can give their increase.” 

Some two years later, after the outbreak of 
_ the war, I received from Sir Athelstan Riley a 
copy of a most gratifying speech which he had 
just made as chairman of that same Association 
for the Promotion of Unity. In it he had taken 
the position that there were two theories of 
church authority—one that of the authority of 
councils, and the other of the papal autocracy. 
One era of church history had culminated in 
the establishment of papal supremacy, in 1870. 
A new era was opening. The position of the 
Anglican Church was on the side of the author- 
ity of councils and against the claim of Rome. 
His forecast was that the former would triumph. 
He alluded in a friendly way in his letter to our 
conference. One incident of this meeting amused 
me. A somewhat corpulent minor ecclesiastic, 
I do not know what his official position was, 
who had seemed little interested in the general 
discussion, seemingly half asleep, at one mo- 
ment said to me: “I suppose you know that the 
Apostle Paul was ordained by the other apos- 
tles at Jerusalem.” I replied that I had not 
known it, but was glad to be so informed. A 


180 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


general laugh followed, and he fell back into 
his slumberous contentment. 

The other meeting of exceptional interest, in 
contrast with the two just mentioned, was a 
quiet evening tea and conversation with a num- 
ber of representative men and women of the 
Society of Friends, who are quite numerous in 
England. A brief welcome by the chairman as 
we gathered around the table, and afterward a 
few moments of silence and a prayer of rare 
simplicity and feeling, were followed by a season 
of conversation without formality. Here there 
were no ecclesiastical difficulties to be consid- 
ered, no controversial differences to be dis- 
cussed, but only the leadings of the Spirit, the 
essential things of the Christian life, the sim- 
plest, deepest things of faith to be thought of. 
It was restful and spiritually helpful, as well as 
most friendly and quickening—a sort of spiritual 
oasis and refreshment in the midst of our pil- 
grimage, which fitted us better for the numer- 
ous ecclesiastical conferences which we were 
holding. 

From that meeting I went shortly afterward 
to Oxford, once more to enter the theological 
atmosphere and to meet in friendly though 
keenly inquisitive conference a gathering of 
students and teachers at Mansfield College at 
Oxford. I recall that at that conference a pro- 
fessor of Hebrew expressed the opinion that the 
great diversity of religious sects might be, after 


CHURCH UNITY 181 


all, a beneficial contribution from many sides 
to the Christian faith. To which I countered 
by saying, in partial agreement with him, that 
I thought the dispersion of one language into 
many tongues at the Tower of Babel might 
also be so regarded, as certainly our English 
speech had been enriched by contributions 
from many tongues, and moreover there were 
so many languages that the dispersion provided 
support and occupation for a great number of 
university teachers, a sentiment which the stu- 
dent part of the audience evidently appreciated. 
Of course the inference was suggested that our 
business in this country was rather to recover 
a common understanding amid our many diver- 
sities of tongues. 

From Oxford I had the pleasure of accepting 
an invitation which I had received from Bishop 
Gore and spending an evening of earnest con- 
versation with him at his residence near Ox- 
ford. On a previous visit to England I had 
casually met Bishop Gore, and at that time 
received a cordial invitation to visit him, which, 
however, I could not at the time accept. I had 
then just heard him deliver a lecture to the stu- 
dents on the essential truths of the Christian 
faith. I had listened with a critical mind, and 
it seemed to me that he was laying a burden of 
belief on the student’s mind too heavy to be 
borne; and had I been obliged to report the lec- 
ture immediately afterward I fear that my 


182 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


comments would not have been lacking in se- 
verity. But being introduced to him immedi- 
ately afterward, I was so charmed with his 
personal manner and cordial sincerity that I 
certainly should have revised my report if I 
had been called upon to publish it. I looked 
forward, accordingly, with eagerness to an 
opportunity to sit down with him in quietness 
and to talk things over. Nor were my anticipa- 
tions disappointed. I was sure of his keen in- 
terest in social problems and of his disposition 
to work with all others for the social and indus- 
trial welfare of the people, and I had made up 
my mind that I would begin our interview from 
the practical rather than from the ecclesiastical 
side of our greatest problem of church co- 
operation and unity. In this I found him deeply 
interested, and I let the theological or ecclesi- 
astical matters drift into our conversation as 
they might. I take from a letter to my wife, 
written just after this conversation in his li- 
brary, dated January 28, 1914: “‘I have had my 
talk with the Bishop and got along beautifully, 
obtaining his agreement to our general method 
of procedure, and, on the basis of practical 
statesmanship, one important concession which 
I hardly thought he would make. Not a word 
of controversial discussion, although I touched 
directly on the question of Orders,” 

The concession to which I refer had reference 
to the question of intention in the reception of 


CHURCH UNITY 183 


orders. I referred to the precedent of a certain 
John Humphreys, which I had run across in 
my researches in the Yale Library collection of 
Puritan pamphlets. I had asked if he would 
ordain a Nonconformist on similar terms to 
those proposed by John Humphreys. He said 
he would. 

The following day we were to have our con- 
ference with the Archbishop’s Commission, to 
which we had looked forward with mingled 
hopes and apprehension. I may take the fol- 
lowing account of it from a letter written im- 
mediately after it, which was not intended for 
publication, but which expresses my impres- 
sions of it at the time better than anything I 
might now write about it. 

“We have had the most significant and suc- 
cessful day of all. One thing which I had hoped 
might be done came about of itself. We were 
anxious to make our meeting with them an en- 
tering wedge for similar conferences between 
them and the English Nonconformists, but did 
not know how this might be brought about, al- 
though we had conferred about it the evening 
before with their Secretary and our friend Mr. 
Tatlow. So we had said we must simply watch 
for it and make the most of it. The opportunity 
Was given us without our having to: wait for 
it. Their Chairman, the Bishop of Bath and 
Wells, in an opening address said that if in the 
course of our interviews with other communions 


184. RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


there were any who might like to confer with 
them, they should be gratified to do so. To 
this welcome I made the following reply: 
““The American Deputation would express 
their grateful sense of your gracious words and 
their appreciation of your clear conception of 
the purpose of the proposed movement for the 
World Conference as a first step toward Church 
Unity. We are non-Episcopal clergymen, rep- 
resenting the Protestant Episcopal Church, as 
well as the other American communions; and 
it seems to us that our presence here in con- 
ference with the Archbishop’s Committee of the 
Church of England is itself a fact of more sig- 
nificance than anything we may say or do. 
“May we assure you that after having had 
conferences with official representatives of the 
non-Episcopal Churches of Great Britain and 
Ireland, we may express their earnest desire to 
confer together with you concerning these fun- 
damental religious problems in the same desire 
and spirit which you so nobly expressed in your 
address to us this morning; and it will be a 
gratification to us to comply with your request 
in putting you in communication with those 
whom we have already visited. We devoutly 
trust that in the way thus opening before us, 
we may be led on through some providential 
simplification of our present problems until we 
come to an ultimate manifestation of the essen- 
tial oneness of the Lord’s disciples, so real, so 


CHURCH UNITY 185 


vital, and so dynamic, that the world may see 
and believe in its Christ from God.’”’ 

They asked us to write out for the press our 
response which I had made to their address of 
welcome, and both were to be printed by them 
together. Bishop Gore spoke in response to us, 
and I may quote the following reference to it 
in my letter home. “I wish you could have 
heard Bishop Gore’s beautiful tribute to me. 
I was so touched by it that I cannot remember 
the words fully. He referred to what he called 
my wonderful and delicate power of entering 
into the position and difficulties of another man 
of views differing from my own, speaking par- 
ticularly of my conversation with him last eve- 
ning, and at some length in a somewhat similar 
tone, and it was all said with so much tender- 
ness and feeling. I had sought to understand 
and approach him on his own ground and to 
enter sympathetically at least into an under- 
standing of his positions, but I was taken com- 
pletely by surprise by his reference to our con- 
versation, and I mention it because I think it 
reveals a side of a great ecclesiastical leader 
with strong, reasoned convictions, which was 
not generally appreciated by his opponents. 
His most kind reference to me seems to me to 
reveal the loneliness in which a man is com- 
pelled to stand, as a champion of strong con- 
victions must often deeply feel.’’ 

Through such personal sympathies and under- 


186 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


standings the way toward church unity may 
more directly be found. Surely the one church 
ought to be great enough to comprehend in 
one outward fellowship all who can come into 
such personal appreciations of one another. I 
was further gratified by what follows in this 
account of the conference in the same letter. 
“Then Mr. Athelstan Riley spoke apprecia- 
tively of the conversations which we had had 
in his house. . . . Our witness of the sincere 
and deeper feelings of the Nonconformists and 
desires for more religious unity were well re- 
ceived. Then after we left they held a meeting 
by themselves and did spontaneously the one 
thing which Mr. Tatlow (whom we had con- 
sulted the previous evening) was puzzled to 
know how to bring about. For we had hardly 
returned to our hotel when he called us up and 
informed us with great satisfaction that they 
had voted to make the first advance and in- 
vitation for personal conferences with the Non- 
conformists, and had at once appointed a com- 
mittee for that purpose. That was just what 
we most desired to have accomplished. Thus 
we had finished our work of official visitation. 
While the churches and papers were distracted 
with the Kikuyu controversy, our message of 
peace and good-will from America had been 
heard, and the bishop’s address and our re- 
sponse will be indeed a higher and sweeter 
Christian note. We have seemed to be so guided 


CHURCH UNITY 187 


as by some higher leading and the path before 
us made so straight from beginning to end that 
we lost the sense of nervous tension that would 
have been natural, and we seemed to take it 
for granted that we need take no anxious 
thought for what we should say at the mor- 
row’s conferences, for it would be given to us 
what to say.” 

A newspaper reporter who had questioned 
me upon our arrival as to our plans, said to me: 
“So you propose to fight it out on these lines ?” 
I answered: “No, we propose to think it out 
on these lines.”” So we had tried to do all to- 
gether in those conferences. 

The day before our departure I had accepted 
an invitation from the archbishop of Canter- 
bury to dine and spend the night at Lambeth 
Palace. He had earlier sent me such an invi- 
tation, which I had been obliged by our engage- 
ments to defer. It was, however, much to my 
satisfaction it had so turned out that I might 
make my farewell visit in England at Lambeth. 
The memory of it lingers as one of the privileges 
of my life. I may use an extract from a brief 
letter which I found time to write to my wife 
to aid my further recollections of it: 

“J am writing by the light of three candles 
in a chamber of Lambeth Palace, so that you 
may have a few lines on the Archbishop’s paper. 
I have just been at family prayers in one of the 


oldest of English Chapels, and I dined in a 


188 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


room lined with the portraits of the Bishops of 
Canterbury in an unbroken Succession. The 
simplicity and beauty of that evening prayer 
of the Archbishop’s household impressed me 
deeply—the maids in their white dresses, and 
the other servants of the household were gath- 
ered before the Archbishop, who repeated por- 
tions of the service of Evening Prayer without 
intonation and with a simple tenderness and 
devoutness which seemed to me to impart to 
the prayers a rare meaning and richness. The 
present Archbishop is a charming personality. 
He said on greeting me that he had been wait- 
ing to see me for more than twenty years as 
my book, ‘ Old Faiths in New Light,’ started him 
on lines which he had since been pursuing. His 
wife regretted that she was not well enough to 
appear, as she had read almost everything that 
I had written. So at once he made me at home. 
I had a long, very interesting talk with him be- 
fore dinner; then I met the Archbishop of York 
and the Bishop of Winchester, whom I par- 
ticularly wished to see, and by the fireside we 
talked over all these problems of Church Unity 
in a frank, full, and gracious way. It all seems 
wondrously providential to me. I have thus 
had opportunity to say just the things I most 
desired to say to the very men of leading and 
power whom I most desired to meet. They have 
seemed much interested. I have kept steadily 
to my line of approach, appreciation of values 


CHURCH UNITY 189 


and practical statesmanship in the work of 
comprehension. And now here in the most his- 
toric place of the Church of England my work 
is done, and I start homeward.” * 

One thing more, however, remained to be 
done before we could regard our work in Eng- 
land completed. We had obtained assurance 
from the several ecclesiastical bodies with which 
we had held conferences that they would ap- 
point commissions to take part in the prepara- 
tion for the world conference. But no arrange- 
ments had been made to bring them together 
for conference among themselves whenever it 


* Some months later I received this letter from the archbishop: 


FARNHAM CASTLE, 
SURREY. 


My prar Dr. Newman SmyrTu, June 10, 1914. 


I have to thank you very warmly, though more than tardily (!) 
for your kind communication of March 25, enclosing the letter 
dated March 21 from the Advisory Committee. The spirit, tone, 
& substance of these documents commends itself very warmly 
to me. 

Next week we are to have a first meeting between ourselves 
of this Church & some of the Noncomformist or Free Churchmen. 
It is a private confabulation, without reporters or reports. Pray 
that we may be guided and blessed in it. Then, as you are per- 
haps ‘aware, I am one of those upon whom falls the serious re- 
sponsibility of some advice on Kikuyu: & that will begin on July 
27, last some days. I pray you kindly to hold us in your prayers, 
before & at the time. 

That evening when we met at Lambeth was indeed a memo- 
rable one to me. And the gravity, beauty, large-mindedness of 
ite whole tone upon the subject impressed all of us, I think, 

eeply. 

I may have one or two fragmentary efforts of my own to send 
you before long, if you are willing to accept them. 

Yours very sincerely, 
Epw. WINTON. 


1909 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


might be desirable. Fortunately just before 
our departure the Free Church Council had ex- 
tended to us an invitation to a farewell break- 
fast. ‘here we summed up our work and, after 
some expression of views as to how the work 
might be continued, they designated three of 
their number to act as conveners to bring the 
several commissions into communication with 
one another after they should be appointed at 
the forthcoming meetings of the various com- 
munions in England and Wales. We informed 
them of the appointment of the Archbishop’s 
Commission for conferences with such Non- 
conformist commissions as might desire it, and 
they agreed to see to it that such a representa- 
tive committee on their part should be secured. 
This was afterward done, and their helpful re- 
ports of their meeting with one another have 
been published. 

So our work having thus been completed, we 
started homeward devoutly grateful for the 
way which had seemed to us so providentially 
opened, and the response which from all quar- 
ters had been made to our message. 

Since my return, as I have looked up at that 
memorial window behind the pulpit of Center 
Church and thought of the first service held on 
this shore by the company of pilgrims, with 
John Davenport their pastor with the open 
Bible in his uplifted hand, beside it there comes 
to me that other picture in my memory of that 


CHURCH UNITY IgI 


evening in Lambeth Palace. But yesterday, as 
the Lord counts time, so I thought, John Daven- 
port left the diocese of Canterbury, disowned 
and an exile, to gather a little company of pil- 
grims in a new free church in the wilderness. 
And there was I, a lineal successor of Daven- 
port, the exiled preacher from Canterbury, 
myself a guest of the archbishop of Canterbury 
at Lambeth, partaking of its simple hospitality, 
conversing of the things pertaining to the king- 
dom of God at home and abroad, and particu- 
larly in the missionary fields of the church. 

The work of soliciting the co-operation of 
churches from all parts of the world was ap- 
proaching its completion when the war arose, 
and all immediate efforts for the convening of 
the world conference were necessarily post- 
poned. Meanwhile it was decided to carry on 
the work by organizing and holding preliminary 
conferences of the churches at home. 

Since the war the work of enlisting foreign 
churches in the world conference has been re- 
sumed, and one important preliminary con- 
ference held abroad. Questions to be discussed 
have been formulated, and although some fur- 
ther delays have seemed necessary, it is now 
expected that erelong the final world confer- 
ence may be assembled. 


CHAPTER XI 


PARABLE OF THE LOBSTER AND 
THE CREEDS 


OWARD what is Protestantism coming? 
This is a question which the war has 
left to be answered. For the Protestant 
churches not to face it would be for them to be- 
come defaulters of their own history. I wish 
that this searching question might be put di- 
rectly to the laity as well as to the clergy of all 
the Protestant churches. It is not to be taken 
pessimistically, as though one were exclaiming, 
Into what further dissensions and bankruptcy 
of belief Protestantism is going; but seriously, 
hopefully, and decisively: To what greater 
Christianity may Protestants now come? This 
question I raised in the opening passage of my 
book, published in 1908, entitled “Passing 
Protestantism and Coming Catholicism.” If 
the question was at all ahead of the times then, 
not to raise and find the answer to it now would 
be to fall hopelessly behind our time. The com- 
mon cause of Christianity is at stake. Shall the 
people outside our churches witness now a re- 
crudescence of denominationalism or the coming 
of a new era of comprehensive Christianity ? 
Next to the word Christian in the Protestant 
creeds stands the great word catholic. It ap- 
192 


THE CREEDS 193 


peared about the end of the first century in an 
epistle of Ignatius: “‘Where Christ is, there is 
the Catholic Church.” The word catholic is 
lowered and profaned if it is made the name of 
any party within the church. The first question 
should be: Is Protestantism going toward catho- 
licity, or falling away into worse denomination- 
alism? Jesus did not tell His disciples to tarry 
long in Jerusalem; He bade them go up to 
Galilee; there they should behold Him on the 
mount of ascension. It has been asked: Shall 
the Protestant churches go back to Jerusalem, 
to Athens, or to Rome? Yes, but not to tarry 
at any one. Not to stop with the apostolic be- 
ginnings of Christianity, nor with the Greek 
philosophy of religion and its definitions of the 
true nature of the Godhead in words for which 
there are no exact equivalents in the Nicene 
Creed. Not to wait at Rome, even though it 
claims it has a living authority to interpret the 
faith. The real and now pressing question is: 
Shall the Protestants be content to stop, each 
in his own isolated hut, and say: ‘‘ No passing 
here’? 

But it will be said, unless we stand fast in 
the creeds shall not the faith be abandoned? 
There is a much overlooked but simple distinc- 
tion which needs to be made between the faith 
and the containers of the faith. Jesus left for 
us in our time, as well as for His disciples, His 
plain saying concerning the new wine and the 


194 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


old bottles. No creed of the living church was 
ever made yesterday or can be made to-day 
which on some to-morrow shall not need to be 
remade. A Presbyterian clergyman once said 
to me: “The Presbyterian Church is like a bot- 
tle: there is plenty of room in it after one gets 
in, but the difficulty is to get in through the 
neck of the bottle.”” An honest clergyman may 
subscribe to all the creeds of Christendom just 
as Chillingworth, the author of that famous 
book, ““The Bible the Religion of Protestants,” 
subscribed to the articles of the Church of 
England, writing beneath his signature: “I be- 
lieve in them because the truth contained in 
them is more than the errors.” 

Possibly those believers who would secure 
the faith by encasing it tightly in the creeds 
may learn a lesson from nature’s method of 
conserving life, one not too scientific even for 
the Biblical literalist to accept. When the 
young lobster first arrives nature provides it 
with a shell large and pliable enough for it to 
grow in. Ere long its shell becomes too small 
and brittle, and nature, not to be thwarted, 
lets it find retirement for a while among the 
rocks, while it casts off its shell and grows an- 
other one larger even than its immediate need. 
In it it ventures forth, and, continuing however 
to grow, nature casts off the old and puts on 
again the larger shell. This might be called the 
Parable of the Lobster and the Creeds. Faith 


THE CREEDS 195 


needs creeds, and creeds need to be made and 
remade from age to age that faith may survive. 

These further considerations seem called for 
if we would escape from confusion of vital 
issues with secondary questions. 

The names fundamentalists and modernists, 
as used in the papers, are themselves mislead- 
ing. The real fundamentalists are the scien- 
tists, who go down as far as their researches 
may carry them through the evolution of life 
toward the beginnings of matter. Thus they 
are also modernists, as they have discovered a 
new world of whirling motions and attractions 
in the atom, and also through their mastery of 
ethereal energies enable us through our radios 
to listen to what the poets have called the 
music of the spheres. The Protestant theo- 
logians would be false to their own faith in the 
Bible did they not search the Scriptures as far 
as modern historical researches may enable 
them to interpret them. Moses himself was a 
fundamentalist so far as he sought for founda- 
tions in the creation for his faith in God; he was 
also a modernist, as he went far beyond and 
above the mythologies of his day, and with a 
great faith, though little knowledge, conceived 
of an orderly process of creation. Among the 
varieties of religious experience it is full time 
that we should recognize and welcome what may 
rightly be called scientific spirituality. 

One thing more should be done if we would 


~~ 


196 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


understand to what Protestantism may even- 
tually come. Just as a surveyor may step back 
far enough to sight along his lines in order to 
carry them farther on, so should we go back 
far enough in history to enable us to look for- 
ward from determinative points in the past to 
forecast the line of progress in the future. Two 
such eras may be distinguished in the history of 
English Protestantism, and a third is already in 
sight. The first was an age of persecution. The 
second has been an era of toleration. In it sects 
have multiplied and Protestants divided. The 
signs of the coming of another era are already 
in sight. One not to be mistaken nor neglected 
was given in the appeal of the Lambeth Con- 
ference of Anglican Bishops to all Christian 
people for common fellowship in work and wor- 
ship. At the hour when their appeal was 
adopted one venerable bishop said: ‘‘I am sacri- 
ficing convictions and prejudices of a lifetime.”’ 
Another exclaimed: ‘‘The great church has 
arrived.’ It has not yet arrived, but the signs 
of its coming are above the horizon. The arch- 
bishop of Canterbury said: “‘We have launched 
out into the great deep.” He appealed for “a 
new adventure of faith.” In the same spirit 
one eminent bishop of the American Episcopal 
Church once wrote to me: “I would be willing 
to see the whole Episcopal Church swallowed up 
in something greater than itself, but I would not 
see 1t swallowed up in anything less than itself.”’ 


THE CREEDS 197 


The people round about our churches care 
little for our theologies; they do care much for 
a religion which can be put into practice for 
the real Christianity of Christ to save modern 
civilization. The reorganization for the sake 
of efficiency of power-plants and co-operative 
industries of Christianity must be mainly the 
work of the laity. As I listened the other night 
to an address of Secretary Hoover to the Society 
of Electrical Engineers, and followed his mas- 
terful exposition of the problems of our indus- 
trial development, their vastness and complex- 
ity, it seemed to me that by changing only the 
words his address would apply as well to the 
problems of our modern Christianity, and when 
he said that the solution might be found in the 
one word, connection, I wished we had for the 
organization of the powers of Christianity—a 
Hoover. 


c- 


CHAPTER XII 
LAST REFLECTIONS 


(Note: Written by Doctor Smyth a few days before his death.) 


S I look back over the years of my life, 

It seems to me that its course at im- 

portant points has been determined for 

me by some unseen Power; as the direction of 

a boat, so we are told, may be controlled by an 

unseen hand on the keys of a wireless power on 
the shore. 

I could not tell, for instance, just when I de- 
cided to enter the army during the Civil War. 
I seemed simply to find that I had so decided. 
It was not what I had been studying and fit- | 
ting myself to be; but the unseen guiding Provi- 
dence had turned me, hardly realizing it, into 
another course, and I found myself enlisted as 
a soldier in the Army of the Potomac. And it 
has proved to be good, and not evil for me, all 
through the long course of my subsequent life. 
That year in the army I have come to regard 
as the best year’s course in my education for 
the Christian ministry. I had thought of it at 
the time only as an interruption of preparation 
for my life’s work, but I often find myself to 
this day thinking and working along the lines 
of the experience in my army life. 

198 


LAST REFLECTIONS 199 


When I left home for the army my mother 
was nearing what proved to be the end of a 
lingering illness. No duty that I had to meet 
at the army front seemed to me to require more 
courage than the last lingering moment when I 
had to turn from her bedside and say good-by 
to my mother. I never saw her again. She died 
when we were in pursuit of Lee toward Appo- 
mattox. I remember still how, in the first charge 
which my regiment was ordered to make, it 
was with the thought flashing through my mind 
that perhaps that way forward might prove 
for me the shortest way to meet my mother; 
and that made me leap forward at the head of 
my company. 

I began to preach at a time when I was in 
deep bereavement. My only sister, Mary, 
whom I dearly loved, who after our mother’s 
death had been everything to me, had been 
taken from me into the life beyond. I remember, 
as though it were but yesterday, that a few 
days after we had laid her to rest, the pastor of 
our home church in Brunswick came to me to 
ask me to supply the pulpit in a neighboring 
church the following Sunday. I told him I 
could not preach under so great bereavement. 
But he led me to see that it was best to begin 
at once. I consented, but only after having first 
made to myself a pledge that, come in God’s 
will for me what might, I would seek to make 
my ministry for others a Gospel of Hope and 


200 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


of triumph over death. Not long afterward my 
father was called away from us to join those 
who had gone before him to prepare a place for 
him in some one of those many mansions in the 
other world. My earthly home was broken up. 
‘I looked behind to find my past and lo! it 
had gone before me!” 

My own life, since that early baptism of sor- 
row, has been singularly free from bereavement, 
but I have sought through all these years ever 
to keep among the sorrows of others the early 
consecration of my ministry to the Gospel of 
Hope. I have never willingly or knowingly 
allowed a funeral service to strike any less 
Christian a note. The use of one and the same 
burial service without variation cannot do 
this; each service must be individualized. Did 
not Jesus Himself always individualize His 
ministry among those who came to Him? The 
minister should seek to make Jesus Himself 
present in each home of sorrow, as He was in 
the house of Mary and Martha. By no uni- 
form or written selection of Scriptures may 
this be done. From all over the Bible the words 
fitted to each household in sorrow may be gath- 
ered. The words of prayer should be in ac- 
cordance with the immediate individual needs. 
It is sometimes surprising to one who for this 
purpose searches the Scriptures to see how the 
Bible may be focussed, as it were, upon every 
individual case of need. 


LAST REFLECTIONS 201 


THE FORWARD-LOOKING LIFE AND ITS 
CONTINUATION HEREAFTER 


It was doubtless due to the breaking up of 
my home at the beginning of my ministry that 
I find inquiries concerning the future running 
through all my studies since. The popular re- 
ligious books on immortality, however comfort- 
ing to believers, failed to satisfy me. Valuable 
and helpful as they were to persons already be- 
lieving, or sometimes as suggestive of future 
possibilities beyond death, they did not go deep 
enough to find the intellectual foundations, be- 
neath doubts, for faith in immortality. I was 
seeking for intimations of man’s survival value 
in the elemental constitution and progressive 
evolution of the creation up to man, and his 
survival value. Such searching, however dis- 
quieting at times it must needs be, brings all 
the way along its own increasing expectation. 

A real, living faith must be always a forward- 
looking faith. From what is known it will be 
an earnest expectation of things yet to be re- 
vealed. 

Some of the most devitalized dogmatists are 
to be found among certain younger clergymen, 
whose beliefs reached their full growth and be- 
came fixed when they graduated from the 
theological seminary. There they had been 
stamped with the indelible mark of orthodoxy. 
At whatever time in his life it may be, younger 


202 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


or later on, a man becomes really old when his 
view of life becomes incapable of enlargement, 
his habits of thought hardened, and when his 
faith, clothed in a ceremonial strait-jacket, has 
no freedom left in which to grow. Wells with- 
out water are such dogmatists; trees without 
sap. But those Christians whose faith has been 
kept out in the open air and sunshine never 
grow old; their spirits are always young, and 
when, in their old age, they go home to the 
God of the living, we, as we remember them up 
to their last days, call them blessed as the chil- 
dren of God. That is not an accidental or in- 
significant arrangement of words in the apos- 
tolic trilogy of the virtues—faith, hope, and 
love. For hope is the golden link between the 
two. All spiritual truths are forward-looking, 
glimpses of brighter revealings, prophecies of a 
new world overcoming ancient wrongs, of hap- 
pier welfare for all people, all things working 
together for good. As in my youth I conse- 
crated my ministry to the search for truth, the 
Gospel of Hope, my last prayer might be for grace 
sufficient and in it something of the optimism 
of that perfect love which casteth out all fear. 

If doubts still linger as a Christian’s life 
draws near its close, they may be rimmed with 
light; as once toward sunset looking westward 
I saw a cloud lingering on the horizon, but, as 
I looked, I beheld a band of gold touching it 


from above and gradually bending around it 


LAST REFLECTIONS 203 


till it encircled the whole cloud; and, while I 
stood looking, the cloud itself had become a 
glory and all the evening sky was bright. 


THE THINGS THAT REMAIN 


As I look backward through these past fifty 
years, and forward toward the coming years, 
what are the things that remain? What are the 
abiding faiths? What the substance of things 
hoped for? These I now find for myself under- 
lying all my lifelong studies, running through 
all my books, but never coming to full expres- 
sion. These abiding realities of faith are struc- 
tural—laid in the foundations of the creation. 
They are developmental forces and successive 
formations of the personal life. They are Chris- 
tian, as they are interpreted and harmonized in 
the person and the life of Christ. 

As the generations pass and knowledge grows, 
how shall it fare with the faith in the person of 
Christ? Shall His light fade as the centuries 
pass since Jesus was known by His disciples 
and as man’s knowledge grows? His farewell 
promise to His disciples was: “I am with you 
always even unto the end of the world.’ So 
far as we may prophesy of the ages to come 
from the vanishing past until now, we have the 
answer: the Christ is always with men in the 
Spirit of Christianity. We still to-day believe 
in the revelation of God in Christ, not merely 
because in the receding dawn of Christianity 


204 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


His disciples believed in Him, but because now 
our skies are filled with the “Light that lighteth 
every man coming into the world.” 

Jesus Himself left no written teachings with 
His disciples. Once, we are told, He wrote 
something on the sands of the shore, which the 
next inflowing waves would have washed away. 
He built no memorial. But one simple thing 
which He did has remained with us, the break- 
ing of the bread in His name, and the cup of 
communion, as in His Presence always with us. 

Our little systems have their day. Our his- 
toric creeds require new interpretations. Our 
churches are reformed, and all must wait to be 
gathered up into some great Christian compre- 
hension. But before us the Spirit of Christ 
always goes, even unto the end of the world. 
Our human life is revealed and glorified in His. 

But for us shall there be entrance into that 
Omnipresence in which, as the sacred Scripture 
promises, there is no darkness at all? I remem- 
ber another evening sky. From my summer 
home at Islesford, Maine, opposite Mount 
Desert, I looked across the water at an opening 
between two mountains where the last gleams 
of the sunset would sometimes linger. While 
all around the horizon the sunset was passing 
away, a cloud hung over that pass-way between 
the mountains toward the sky beyond. As I 
was looking, lo! the cloud was lifted, and I stood 
gazing into the sky above. I could not help 


LAST REFLECTIONS 205 


thinking that so at the earth’s last day the 
gate of heaven shall be opened for all who will 
to enter in. 


OLD SERMONS 


One morning during my pastorate in Quincy, 
Ill., a farmer appeared in my study and told 
me that he had discovered a half-barrel of old 
sermons of his grandfather’s, and he wanted to 
sell them to me, as he might any products of 
his farm. I asked him what he thought I could 
do with them if I bought them. ‘“‘Why, use 
them,” he said. But I answered they would 
not be my sermons. “Of course they would be 
yours if you bought them,” he answered. I had 
no such scruples, however, about using my 
own old sermons. Once, in my earlier ministry, 
when I was about to leave for a vacation, I left a 
package of my old sermons with a friend for safe- 
keeping, and marked them “Dried Tongue.” 
However, I found an old sermon of my own of 
little use unless, as I looked it over, it might 
come back to me as a new sermon, and I could 
feel it with the same freshness of mind as when 
it first came to me to preach it. The old in our 
passing lives has vital value still if it enters 
into the present as stimulus and hope of. the 
coming day. Our lives are rooted in the Ever- 
lasting. The best past becomes the better 


future. Our God, says the Scripture, is not the 
God of the dead but the living. 


206 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


THE UNPREACHED SERMON 


Most of my old written sermons I have 
burned up, not wishing to leave them. As I 
glance at the sermons, either mere notes or 
written out, which remain, one sermon, arising 
as it were from the dust of them all, seems to 
rise before me—it is the unpreached sermon. 
It is the word ever striving to come to expres- 
sion, the faith ever seeking new embodiment, 
the vision ever going before one, the strivings 
of the Spirit that an apostle called unutterable. 
How often, and especially when kindly listeners 
may feel that their pastor was at his best, must 
he come down from his pulpit feeling that he 
has failed to bring to utterance the truth which 
he felt, the vision which he could not utter! 
He will try again, another Sunday, and always 
to the end of his ministry his own last sermon 
will never have been preached. 


THE CREEDS AND THE FAITH 


There are no formal and final creeds written 
out in the Bible; but there is one triumphal 
chapter in the New Testament on what is done 
by faith. We may well endeavor to bring up 
our creeds to the measure of our working faith, 
but to make the creed the measure of our faith 
may prove to be untrue to the very Spirit of 
our faith. Too often dogmatists have been false 
to the faith in their very defense of the creeds 


LAST REFLECTIONS 207 


of the church which contained the faith. Of 
the many statements of belief held by the 
churches at the present time, the declaration 
made by the National Council in 1913 seems to 
me at once both conservative and progressive. 
At that time the differences between the lib- 
erals and conservatives threatened an ecclesi- 
astical conflict and even possibly a split in the 
denomination. We had to act on a report sub- 
mitted by a large commission on a reorganiza- 
tion of our whole working organization, and a 
statement also of our belief. The controversies 
of the preceding years had indeed died away, 
but there still remained the divergencies between 
the old and the new doctrinal tendencies. Some 
of the newspapers at the time, ever seeking some 
new thing, hailed the prospect of a split in the 
Congregational body. As I was numbered 
among the liberals, I was asked by some of the 
younger ministers to join with them in present- 
ing simply a short and general confession of faith 
for the council to adopt. It would have been 
sufficient as a confession of faith for admission 
to the church, but it was not a creed. In the 
Andover controversies I had maintained that 
those of us who were called destroyers of the 
faith ‘‘once delivered to the saints,’ on account 
of our more liberal interpretations of it, were 
in reality true conservators of it. I declined, 
therefore, even for the sake of liberty, to cut 
our denomination off from our inheritance in 


208 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


the historic creeds of the whole church, or to 
adopt a resolution which might be so misunder- 
stood. | 


A HALF-CENTURY ’S CHANGE IN THE RELATIONS 
BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE } 


It has been a great experience for any thought- 
ful Christian to have lived through the past 
period of fifty and more years in its rapid ex- 
tension of scientific knowledge and the corre- 
sponding adjustments of religious thought. 
We have gone a long ways since Darwin’s book 
on the “Origin of Species” first startled the re- 
ligious world and the so-called conflict between 
religion and science was at its height. In its 
earlier stages there was more or less misunder- 
standing and confusion of tongues in both 
camps. But the defenders of the faith were 
then, for the most part, able philosophical rea- 
soners, and they read at least the writings which 
contained the new views of the creation of the 
world, the testimony of the rocks and the origin 
of man. They took, indeed, at first temporary 
and precarious refuge for their faith in more or 
less artificial interpretations of the Mosaic ac« 
count of the creation. Not a few points of har- 
mony with science might indeed be found if 
the Biblical text were not too literally inter- 
preted. But, ere long, scientific methods in the 
study of natural history began to be applied 
also to the historical books of the Bible and 


LAST REFLECTIONS 209 


also to the origin and development of religious 
ideas. Nowadays all received beliefs and cus- 
toms, social and philosophical as well as re- 
ligious traditions, are subjected to scientific 
methods of research and determination. Our 
best religious thought has become scientific in 
its method and broad in its outlook. Modern 
thinking has become an eager hunt in all di- 
rections for realities. And the farther back we 
go toward the ultimates of our knowledge of 
nature and the beginnings of matter, the farther 
we seem to depart from gross and meaningless 
materialism, and the nearer do we draw to the 
realization of some spiritual energy in all and 
through all. What we once called chaos seems 
to resolve itself into a primal and integral har- 
mony. All things from the beginning appear 
to have been working together for good. 

It has been my fortunate experience to have 
lived through this period of New England the- 
ology, and through my successive publications 
to have endeavored to show that through evo- 
lutionary science faith may be reassured. 
Sometimes in my own preparation for the pul- 
pit and consequent wrestling with my own ques- 
tionings of spiritual forces and laws, as well as 
over the doubts and difficulties of some of my 
hearers, there has come to me a fresh reassur- 
ance and inspiration in turning to my biological 
studies. Looking into the creative processes of 
life as made apparent in some of my laboratory 


210 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


slides, I have seemed to grasp some great crea- 
tive principle or law of life starting from the 
beginnings of things and reaching on and up 
toward fulfilment’s passing knowledge. My 
doubts seemed to be but passing shadows of our 
human ignorance. | 
There certainly has come about a marked 
change in theological teaching and preaching 
during the past fifty years. Systems of theology 
which were once taught and preached, and also 
made subjects of controversy, are now resting 
in peace together on the shelves of our libraries 
in our schools of divinity. The once familiar 
doctrinal words are now almost unheard in the 
pulpits, and would carry but little meaning to 
our congregations. We have dispensed with 
our catechisms in the Sunday-schools. This 
change, however, is not so much as it might 
seem to be in the substance of the truths as 
formerly taught; it is rather a difference of ap- 
proach and of emphasis on the truths which are 
regarded by us as the first essentials of Chris- 
tian faith. The old systems have been broken 
up by repeated shocks of new knowledge. Com- 
pleted systems, indeed, of divinity or of sci- 
ence, need to be broken up so soon as they are 
completed. Some new knowledge, some larger 
conception will be found to have been left out. 
Not, indeed, that systematic thinking and teach- 
ing does not have its use, but it is never to be 
regarded as final. The real question for us to 


LAST REFLECTIONS 211 


ask is whether or not we may come forth from 
our little systems which have had their day into 
some larger, clearer vision of the one Divine 
Reality. In our new studies and from our wider 
horizons of knowledge, are we nearer God? 

I think that older ministers who have, through 
long pastorates, kept in touch with the times, 
would find in the changes in the topics of their 
sermons or in their methods of preaching an 
interesting reflection of the changes 1n the whole 
attitude of the modern mind toward the church 
and religion which have gradually taken place 
during the past fifty years. In their old ser- 
mons they will probably find either in the text 
chosen or the subjects of the sermons, or at 
least in frequently recurring passages in them, 
such doctrines as original sin, regeneration, 
conversion, its need and its evidences, divine 
foreknowledge and free will, the atonement and 
conflicting views of it. The contrast with the 
sermons of to-day is of interest to an older min- 
ister not only because reflecting the changes 
which, perhaps more imperceptibly than he was 
aware, have taken place in his own mental atti- 
tude or his real growth in faith, but also be- 
cause it shows what notable changes have taken 
place in his congregations, and what the peo- 
ple have looked for from their pastors. Some 
of his old sermons might possibly keep his 
present congregation awake because of their 
novelty and fire, but the old controversies and 


212 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


the theological terms would convey to most of 
them little meaning or reality. And yet, though 
the minister and his people have been through 
all these changes—however much has changed 
—running through them all is the same leading 
of the Spirit, the fulfilment of Jesus’ promise 
to his first disciples that his Spirit should lead 
them to all truth. 


COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES 


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THE CONTRIBUTION OF NEWMAN 
SMYTH TO THEOLOGY 


BY BENJAMIN W. BACON 
‘| HAVE just arranged all my books to- 


gether on a shelf in the order in which 

they were published. As I glance over 
them my first thought is how IJ ever found time 
to write them. I could not have done so had 
they not sprung spontaneously out of my own 
mental life, and taken form and expression in 
my preparation for meeting in the pulpit the 
needs of the people for reassurance and illu- 
mination of their faith. The old dogmatisms 
were dissolving and new teachings of the Spirit 
coming. Their light was already dawning on 
the higher Christian scholarship. It was time 
to bring it down to the people. As I now glance 
through them my books seem to me to bear 
witness not merely to my own seeking and find- 
ing new meanings and fresh reassurances of 
faith, but also—what is of more significance— 
they seem to me to stand at least like the pro- 
gressive advance of Christian thought and the- 
ology during the past fifty years. It has been 
a signal period of reconstruction of theologies 
and of the scientific reassurance of a faith that 
can be preached to the people.” 

215 


216 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


Such is the illuminating introduction which 
Doctor Smyth himself prefixes to a survey of 
his literary work. Readers of the successive 
volumes from ‘Religious Feeling” (1877), and 
“Old Faiths in New Light” (1879), down to the 
Taylor Lectures on “Constructive Natural 
Theology” (1913), “‘Passing Protestantism and 
Coming Catholicism” (1908), and “The Mean- 
ing of Personal Life” (1916), will readily under- 
stand why Professor John W. Buckham, in a 
volume entitled “‘ Progressive Religious Thought 
in America”’ (1919), places his name, and a de- 
scription of his life and work, at the head of the 
chapter entitled “‘Newman Smyth and Later 
Representatives of Theological Progress.” In 
the great succession of New England divines 
which begins with Jonathan Edwards and ends 
with what came to be called the New Haven 
school, Doctor Smyth’s place is a great and 
lasting one, though like Edwards he hailed from 
another New England State, and like Bushnell 
felt more of revolt from the traditional teaching 
of the school than of his real and deep affinity 
with it. Buckham is an authority well qualified 
to judge, and the position he assigns to Doctor 
Smyth as not merely a leading theologian of 
our generation but the herald and represen- 
tative of a new and “constructive” theology in 
the generation to come, is well merited. 

Those who knew Doctor Smyth by his theo- 
logical writings would coincide, I think, if im- 


COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES 217 


partial, with this judgment. Those also would 
no doubt agree who knew him only as a preacher, 
without the closer intimacy which he gladly 
welcomed, but which men failed to obtain when 
(as so often happens to our subsequent regret) 
through timidity, or a mistaken idea that an 
air of abstraction and reserve meant a conscious- 
ness of intellectual superiority and desire to 
hold aloof, they shrank away. These, too, would 
say: ““Yes, a great intellect; a keen and logical 
mind; one of the old type of great theological 
reasoners. A man who felt the freedom of the 
faith because he had mastered it. Newman 
Smyth,” they would say, “‘ could take home to 
himself the ancient Horatian motto that pro- 
claimed the spirit of the New Haven theology 
from the title-page of its organ, The New Eng- 
lander: “Nullius addictus jurare in verba ma- 
gistri, because he was competent himself to 
speak with authority.” This judgment, too, 
would be just. A sense of freedom in the knowl- 
edge of the truth is the chief point of affinity 
between Smyth and the older New England 
theologians from whose formule he did not 
hesitate to break away. These are truths ap- 
parent to all. But one characteristic of Doctor 
Smyth’s writings could be learned from no 
other source than his own declaration—the mo- 
tive and spirit of his theological contributions. ° 
That he has given us in the brief survey with 
which I began. 


218 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


Doctor Smyth was eminently conscious of 
living in an age when “‘the old dogmatisms were 
dissolving and new teachings of the Spirit com- 
ing.” If he had cherished any illusions as to 
the meaning of its transition throes, he and his 
friend and fellow soldier Doctor Munger had 
plenty of reminders from contemporary funda- 
mentalists and heresy-hunters that they were 
departing from the old paths. But it needs his 
personal assurance and acknowledgment to re- 
alize that theology was not his primary interest. 
True, his books “‘sprung spontaneously out of 
his own mental life,’ and that mental life was 
rich and energetic, free and discerning, bold and 
patient, in a degree that is rarely paralleled even 
in academic halls. But his writings were not 
produced from the philosopher’s interest in his 
subject. He was not even consciously making 
contributions to it. He had a more unselfish, 
not to say a more modest aim. He spoke and 
wrote “‘to meet the needs of the people for re- 
assurance and illumination of their faith.” He 
aimed to bring down to them “the light which 
had begun to dawn on the peaks of the higher 
Christian scholarship.” 

Shortly before Doctor Smyth’s call to this 
pulpit he had been invited by the Andover 
trustees to the chair of systematic theology 
recently vacated by the famous Professor Park. 
It was a natural consequence of a series of lec- 
ures subsequently published under the title 


COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES 219 


“The Orthodox Theology of To-day” (1881). 
The lectures defended the essentials of the 
Christian faith against unbelievers, and by a 
natural sequence led the Andover trustees to 
this appointment. But the appointment was 
not only “without previous intimation or de- 
sire’ on the part of Doctor Smyth, it was, as 
he expressly tells us, completely “foreign to” 
his own purpose and expectation. New England 
theology as a whole (especially as taught by 
Professor Park) had seemed to him since semi- 
nary days a kind of “orthodox rationalism.” 
Tt had lost touch with reality and life. Always 
an ardent lover of the real and the concrete, 
revelling in the experimental researches of bi- 
ology and physical science, Smyth’s year of 
army life immediately preceding his minis- 
terial training at Andover kindled in him an 
interest in the every-day realities of human life 
no less deep than his love for natural science. 
Just as the later developments of Edwardsian 
Calvinism seemed to him a mere logomachy 
detached from the real world of nature, so a 
career of academic seclusion had little attrac- 
tion for him. He had no aspirations to become 
a theologian. But his very distaste for a the- 
ology whose speculative development had lost 
touch with the tangible realities of science and 
human life made him capable as he could not 
otherwise have been of speaking for the new 
age. The past fifty years have been indeed, as 


220 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


he says, “a period of reconstruction of the- 
ologies.” The old New England theologians 
had at last reached the point where they must 
follow the example of other scientists in ex- 
changing deductive methods for inductive. 
Natural theology was forced to take account 
of modern science. ‘The idea of revelation based 
on rabbinic theories of inspiration gave way 
perforce to the discoveries of criticism. ‘The 
universe of natural law had been unveiled, his- 
tory had been rewritten, a science of the psy- 
chology of religion had been inaugurated and 
beginnings made with the study of compara- 
tive religion, while the New England theologians 
had been occupied with patching the old gar- 
ment of Calvinism. Outside New England one 
may still see the turmoil and terror of the great 
transition. South and West theologies in plenty 
are still being reconstructed. Others are re- 
sisting to the utmost the salutary change. 
Doctor Smyth does not claim too much for his 
own writings when he describes them as “‘stand- 
ing for” this progressive advance. The claim 
which he does not make—that they laid some 
of its foundations—it were perhaps wiser that 
we should not make on his behalf. But this at 
least is true: these writings have given to mul- 
titudes of troubled souls “the scientific re- 
assurance of a faith that can be preached to 
the people.” 

In our age it has become the fashion to de- 


COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES 221 


cry theology. Clergymen apologize in the pul- 
pit for ordered thought in things pertaining to 
the unseen world, and declare that they teach 
religion, but not theology. It is taken to be a 
sign of common sense to have no system of 
thought in matters of the spirit, not to attempt 
a philosophy of life, to repress the natural in- 
stinct of the soul to question the mysterious 
universe in which it finds itself concerning the 
whence, the why, and the whither. Viewed in 
the abstract we might well regard this as a 
strange paradox that men should make it a 
mark of wisdom in a field wherein every man, 
whether he will or no, is so vitally concerned, 
to abandon the reins of reason and let oneself 
be swept along by every chance wind of senti- 
ment or doctrine. In the nature of the case 
the fashion of discrediting theology must needs 
be passing. Ordered thinking must take the 
place of mere inherited tradition, or mere un- 
reasoning sentiment, as surely in religion as in 
philosophy. But as a transient phase the pres- 
ent disrepute of theology is not wholly inex- 
plicable, nor indeed wholly undeserved. Timid 
in the assertion of its native freedom, Christian 
theology lingered too long in the lap of the 
past, enamoured of great system-makers of 
former days, more eager to absorb their results 
than to imitate their example of progressive 
advance. It refused the great forward step of 
modern science from the deductive to the in- 


222, RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


ductive method. Hence indecision, confusion, 
discord. ! 


“‘There’s none who would be foremost 

To lead the host’s attack 

But those behind cry ‘Forward !’ 
And those before cry ‘Back!’ 

And backward now and forward 
Wavers the deep array; 

While on the tossing sea of steel 

To and fro the standards reel; 

And the victorious trumpet-peal 
Dies fitfully away.” 


The starting-point of Doctor Smyth’s the- 
ological contributions was a natural one for a 
student trained in the New England theology, 
yet rebellious at its lack of contact with real 
life. His first book, entitled “The Religious 
Feeling” (1877), was written shortly after his 
return from a period of study in Germany, 
where his attention was drawn by Professor 
Tholuck to the new science of Biblical theology. 
New England theology had indeed occupied it- 
self from the beginning with “the religious feel- 
ing”; but without the remotest conception of 
what would now be called the psychology of 
religion. No; man’s conception of God and duty 
came by inerrant tradition from the experiences 
of Moses, Isaiah, Paul, John, and other canon- 
ized vessels of the Spirit. The experience of re- . 
generative grace came by repeating as closely 
as possible the soul struggles of Paul as de- 


COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES 223 


scribed in his epistles. There had been a time, 
—yes, even a succession of times—when God 
had worked among the Hebrews in a miraculous 
self-manifestation. But even if he were still a 
living God it was considered almost blasphe- 
mous to imagine that present-day experiences 
were a proper norm for interpreting what was 
called revelation. ‘‘The Religious Feeling” had 
no historical development. Biblical theology 
completely revolutionized this point of view. 
It undertook to study revelation as the pro- 
gressive manifestation of the religious feeling. 
The Biblical writings were to be submitted to 
the same critical scrutiny as other ancient rec- 
ords, to obtain from them an understanding of 
the development of religious ideas. Traced back 
to their origins in the religious life of Israel, the 
Biblical conceptions on which our own religion 
is based took on new significance. The litera- 
ture became the index by which we come at the 
work of God as a spiritual Creator. 

The glimpse into the new science of Biblical 
criticism was scarcely more than a prophetic 
foregleam. It did not lead the young disciple 
of Tholuck to become a Biblical critic or philo- 
logian. It did lead him, he tells us, to find the 
grounds of his faith “‘not in so many inherited 
ideas packed away in our minds, but in the 
Life that was in the world from the beginning, 
and which has come to self-consciousness in us, 
springing up in ever fresh spiritual reassurance.”’ 


224. RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


And what he had found vital and helpful to 
his own faith he proceeded, after his wont, to 
bring to “the needs of the people.” 

“Old Faiths in New Light” (1879) was a 
natural sequel to the volume which showed the 
religious feeling in successive ages to be the 
basis of revelation. The post-Reformation at- 
tempt to substitute the authority of a mirac- 
ulous book for that of an infallible church had 
inflicted on English-speaking divines, as on the 
Protestant world generally, the incubus of a 
rabbinic doctrine of Scripture. Biblicism had 
brought about inevitable conflict between the 
growing sciences and ecclesiastical dogma. Some 
were for throwing away the old faiths altogether, 
convinced that the natural sciences had better 
foundation than the dogma. Others were for 
throwing away the natural sciences. Doctor 
Smyth’s keen interest in natural science com- 
bined with his broader apprehension of the 
nature of revelation enabled him to transcend 
this shallow alternative. His book took rank 
with Joseph LeConte’s “‘Evolution and Its Re- 
lation to Religious Thought” (1887), in show- 
ing that the alleged “conflict” was not between 
science and religion but between human dog- 
mas, of which theologians and scientists could 
be equally prolific. 

“Old Faiths in New Light” was followed by 
two other books which proved that Doctor 
Smyth’s resort to natural science was far more 


COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES 225 


than a mere incident to his apologetic. “The 
Place of Death in Evolution” (1897), and es- 
pecially the Lowell Lectures for 1902 entitled 
“Through Science to Faith,” were products of 
actual first-hand laboratory work. They made 
the study of biology, in its most severely scien- 
tific form, the basis for the theological problem 
of life. Here was a theologian taking his task 
in earnest. The great questions of religion, as 
Carlyle defines them, the problems of duty and 
destiny, are now approached along the whole 
wide front of life as we know it, whether in 
lowest amceba or highest human mind. The 
new theology was to be based on something 
wider than a series of proof-texts from the Bible. 

“Constructive Natural Theology” was the 
title appropriately chosen for the Nathaniel W. 
Taylor Lectures for 1913, a book which we must 
group with ‘‘The Place of Death in Evolution” 
and “‘Through Science to Faith” to form a 
trilogy whose outcome is seen in the Taylor 
Lectures. Smyth became for the time being a 
biologist, availing himself of the lectures and 
laboratory work of the university with all the 
ardor of a graduate student working for his 
Ph.D. He no more expected to become a biolo- 
gist than he expected to become a historical 
critic, or philologian, when he took up Biblical 
theology. But biology was the study of life in 
its basic aspects, and to him there were no in- 
surmountable barriers between the life which 


226 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


sleeps in the world of matter, dreams in the 
animal kingdom, and awakes to full conscious- 
ness in man. To know God one must under- 
stand his self-manifestation in life. So Smyth’s 
natural theology began at the bottom of the 
scale. Moreover, death was as much a part of 
nature as life. It was, in fact, its necessary 
complement and counterpart. Mythology might 
find an explanation of death in sentiment and 
imagination. Science must seek its meaning in 
the function it performs in a universe of reason, 
beauty, and law. 

One can see to what kind of constructive 
natural theology such studies as these were 
leading up, and how much broader a founda- 
tion was here being laid for a philosophy of 
life than by the older New England theologians. 
But there were higher regions of life to be 
studied than those of natural theology. Smyth 
was a lover both of nature and of life, one who 
truly looked through nature up to nature’s 
God. But he did not stop with natural theology, 
nor with mere animal life. Duty was as much 
a part of the problem of religion as destiny, 
and a rational mastery of the problem of duty 
can only be obtained by the study of man in 
his relations to his fellow man and to God. 
Hence the able volume in the series of Inter- 
national Handbooks of Theology entitled 
“Christian Ethics” (1892). Doctor Smyth had 
hesitated to accept the invitation to compose 


COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES 227 


this volume, but yielded to the persuasion of 
Professor Briggs, with a result which fully justi- 
fies the choice of the editors and lends greater 
distinction to the series. This volume too is a 
study of life, but life in the higher realm of per- 
sonality. The horizon has widened, but the goal 
is still the same. 

In the latest years of the life of Doctor Smyth 
we must still distinguish between thought and 
activity, remembering that for him the active 
part was ever that first to be chosen. Gifted as 
few men are with intellectual grasp, patient 
with the absorbing devotion of the scientist to 
whom the discovery of new truth brings an in- 
toxicating joy, Doctor Smyth should be remem- 
bered first as one that loved his fellow man. 
His knowledge was valued for the service it 
could do. Hence the absorption of his time and 
interest during those later years which men of 
academic mind are wont to devote to publica- 
tion of their riper thought, in endeavors to pro- 
mote church unity. If it were our purpose 
merely to eulogize we might well pause at this 
point to speak of the patience and humility, 
the tireless devotion, the consummate wisdom 
and learning, which he consecrated to this often 
thankless task. Blessed are the peacemakers, 
for they shall be called the children of God. 
But they seldom find their reward among men. 
This, however, is a field which, though it in- 
volves much knowledge of theology, belongs 


228 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


rather to the art than to the science of religion. 
We must turn from it to Doctor Smyth’s latest 
contributions to the science of theology. 
Nearest akin to these efforts for church unity 
was the volume entitled ‘‘Passing Protestan- 
tism and Coming Catholicism” (1908). Need- 
less to remind members of this congregation 
that “Catholicism” in this title is not to be 
taken in the sense of Roman Catholicism, but 
of catholicity. It is the work of a great lover 
of peace, with vision too large to be satisfied 
with any mere negative, divisive designation. 
Smyth’s Protestantism was as much a protest 
against the sectarian spirit as against tyranny 
and intolerance in the church. But the book 
was not so much a product of his own effort to 
broaden the basis of Christian theology as it 
was a note of welcome to a kindred movement 
in the Church of Rome. Loisy in France, Tyrrel 
and von Hiigel in England, had applied New- 
man’s great principle of the development of doc- 
trine to the policy of the Church of Rome, de- 
manding even a larger liberty of thought and 
teaching than the Lutheran Harnack would 
allow. The Catholic Modernists were modern- 
ists indeed. Some, such as Loisy, were driven 
by the bitter warfare of intolerant ecclesiastics, 
wielding the weapons of excommunication and 
suppression, into an attitude of extreme hos- 
tility foreign both to their nature and purpose. 
Others, like von Hiigel, remained in the church, 


COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES 229 


the possible seed, as Smyth believed, of a truer 
catholicity than Christianity has known since 
the great disruption in Luther’s time. In agree- 
ment with Doctor Smyth, my own sympathies 
would rest rather with the Catholic Modernist 
than with the Lutheran scholar who seeks to 
identify Christianity with the particular form 
it had assumed at a given time. Once more, we 
may say, the principle of unity is to be found 
in “the Life, even that which was from the 
beginning, the eternal life which was with the 
Father and was manifested unto us.” It is not 
to be found in the particular form that life may 
assume at a given date under particular condi- 
tions. 

But we must return to a more direct develop- 
ment of the thinking of our biologist-theologian. 
No volume of the many he wrote so fully rep- 
resents his ripest reflection as that which ap- 
peared toward the close of his career under the 
title “The Meaning of Personal Life” (1916). 
Personal life is of a type that cannot be studied 
under the microscope. It transcends even that 
which can be said to dream in the physical 
world, waken in the animal kingdom, and come 
to full consciousness in man. For we deal here 
with a sphere whose centre lies beyond our- 
selves. Personality is something which we 
share not with the lower world of nature but 
with God. When personality has come into 
right adjustment with that higher realm, then, 


230 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


and then only, may we look for immortality. 
It is in his study of ““The Meaning of Personal 
Life” that Doctor Smyth reveals most clearly 
the service he would render by his constructive 
thought to the distracted and groping mind of 
the generation to which he sought to minister. 
Here he seeks to impart “a unifying sense of 
life,’ and incidentally to “renew our faith in 
man’s survival value.” It is the fuller state- 
ment of his belief in God as the Lord and giver 
of Life, showing the basis of his earlier booklet, 
““Modern Belief in Immortality” (1910). 

I have not attempted a life of Doctor Smyth. 
I have given only a glimpse—too superficial, I 
fear—into what appears to me his contribution 
to theology. To him who found sermons in 
stones, books in the running brooks, and God 
in everything, theology was supremely the sci- 
ence of personal life. Both the science and the 
art were summed up in the person of that 
Master whom he loyally served, not with the 
mind only, but with all his soul and all his 
strength. Among the “‘later representatives of 
progressive religious thought in America” there 
may be others whose literary contribution will 
stand out more prominently in the judgment 
of posterity. There can scarcely be any better 
fitted to represent the transition between the 
old New England theology and the new, the 
reconstruction to which it was compelled to 
turn by the advance of criticism and the prog- 


COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES 231 


ress of natural science. Not evolution only 
must henceforth be the theologian’s field, but 
the development of personal life under the all- 
directing power of love. 


**A fire-mist and a planet, a crystal and a cell, 
A jelly-fish and a saurian, and a cave where the 
cave-men dwell; 
A sense of order and beauty, a face upturned from 
the sod; 
Some call it evolution, and others call it—God. 


A sentry frozen on duty, a mother starved for her 
brood, 
oie drinking the hemlock, and Jesus on the 
rood; 
And millions that humble and nameless the 
straight hard pathway trod; 
Some call it consecration, and others call it 


—God.” 


AN APOSTLE OF CHRISTIAN UNITY 
BY PETER AINSLIE 


RIOR to 1910 I knew Doctor Smyth as an 
P author, a scholar, and a liberal theologian. 
He had spoken to the open-minded of 
the world, and had made a deep impression on 
both sides of the Atlantic in the interest of a 
more liberal and scientific theology. Multitudes 
of the thoughtful have been ever ready to ac- 
knowledge their indebtedness to him. 

In 1910 came a remarkable awakening in the 
interest of Christian unity. A group of Epis- 
copalians started the Christian Unity Founda- 
tion of New York in the summer, and in the 
fall, at their General Convention, they ap- 
pointed a commission on a World Conference 
on Faith and Order. At the same time, in the 
national gatherings of the Congregationalists 
and Disciples, the former meeting in Boston 
and the latter in Topeka, movements were 
launched in the interest of Christian unity; 
likewise, at the same time, the Eastern Ortho- 
dox Church, in its Synod in Constantinople, 
appointed, for the first time in its history, a 
committee to deal with Christian unity. Ven- 
tures in unity were made that year in many 
foreign-mission fields, notably in China. 

232 


5 


COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES 233 


On this flood-tide, which made itself felt in 
most of the Christian communions of the world, 
there were brought together from different 
communions many who were thinking in the 
terms of a united Christendom. The Episcopal 
Commission on a World Conference on Faith 
and Order called a meeting in New York City. 
Forty or fifty persons from various communions 
were present. here appeared to be no special 
programme other than the general theme of 
Christian unity, and many of us volunteered 
to make brief speeches. I had never met Doctor 
Smyth before; but, when the morning session 
was over, we both had discovered that we had 
spoken from such common attitude of mind 
toward Christian unity, that we voluntarily 
made our way toward each other for personal 
acquaintance. From that day to the day of his 
passing there existed such a friendship between 
us that I esteemed it among my richest pos- 
sessions. 

After that we met frequently in Christian 
unity conferences, and many letters passed be- 
tween us. In the winter of 1913-14 the Epis- 
copal Commission on a World Conference on 
Faith and Order sent a non-Episcopal deputa- 
tion to Great Britain in the interest of that 
cause. Doctor Smyth was the chairman of the 
deputation, and Doctor W. H. Roberts was the 
treasurer. On landing in London a group of 
newspaper reporters met us at the station. In 


234. RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


the course of the interview Doctor Smyth said, 
“We are here to face the problems of faith,” 
and quickly the reporter added, “‘And fight 
them out.” “No,” said Doctor Smyth, ‘‘to 
find them out.”’ It was not only a finely coined 
phrase, which he and the rest of us afterward 
had occasion to use frequently, but it revealed 
that our approaches to the problems of faith 
and order would be by conference rather than 
by controversy. It reflected the new attitude 
of mind that had entered into the problem of 
a united Christendom. The method of con- 
troversy was divisive, and always will be, while 
the method of conference is the Christian way 
of adjustment, lending new possibilities toward 
the practicability of unity. 

The day after our arrival in London a ban- 
quet at the Hotel Metropole was tendered the 
deputation. More than a hundred of the most 
distinguished Nonconformists of England occu- 
pied seats at the tables. Sir Joseph Compton- 
Ricketts presided. Words of welcome were 
spoken by Doctor F. B. Meyer, Doctor J. H. 
Shakespeare, Principal P. T. Forsyth, and Doc- 
tor J. Scott Lidgett. Each speaker referred to 
Doctor Smyth’s books, sometimes mentioning 
some special book, and his contribution to the 
thought of the world. It was a most happy 
choice that Doctor Smyth was the chairman of 
the deputation. His name was a winning factor 
in the educational circles of England and Scot- 


COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES 235 


land, where day after day worthy tributes were 
paid him for his clear, bold, and scholarly 
thinking. 

Sir Robert Perks gave to the deputation a 
luncheon, where more than a hundred guests 
assembled, many of them being members of 
Parliament and other distinguished laymen, 
beside ministers. In this instance there were, 
likewise, most cordial expressions by the speak- 
ers of their appreciation of Doctor Smyth’s 
thought in the liberalizing of theology. 

But the finest contribution of this character 
came at the close of the deputation’s work, 
which had been remarkably successful. It was 
on the occasion of meeting with the Arch- 
bishop’s Committee in the Upper House of 
Convocation. After the bishop of Bath and 
Wells had delivered his address from the chair 
and responses had been made, the general work 
of the World Conference on Faith and Order 
was discussed most freely, diverging now and 
then into theological interpretations that bore 
indirectly upon the world conference, when 
Doctor Gore, then the bishop of Oxford, arose 
and, at some length, gave an expression of ap- 
preciation of Doctor Smyth’s theological con- 
tribution. I cannot recall ever having heard 
such a beautiful tribute tendered by one man 
to another. It was fine in richness of thought 
and beauty of spirit. Doctor Smyth was deeply 
moved as he sat modestly with bowed head. It 


236 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


was no ordinary occasion. At the close Doctor 
Temple, now the bishop of Manchester, turned 
to me with a remark of concurring apprecia- 
tion. Men knew his worth and they did not 
hesitate to give expression to their thoughts. 
He had stood in the forefront. Whether as 
preacher at Center Church, or author of books, 
or as speaker in the councils of his own com- 
munion, he was never afraid. 

His bravery was always heartening. I recall 
that among our engagements in London was 
an afternoon in the home of Sir Richard Stap- 
ley. Most of the guests, by their inquiries and 
remarks, gave a decidedly pessimistic outlook 
to the whole field of a united Christendom. 
Doctor Smyth met the conditions with remark- 
able patience and hopefulness in his answers 
and comments; but, toward the close of the 
afternoon, he seemed to grow weary. Then, as 
if to save the day, he launched forth an appeal 
for the unity of Christendom with more con- 
vincing power than I had ever heard him dis- 
play before. His well-trained mind, with ex- 
traordinary skill, brought such answers to the 
objections that had been made, and set forth 
the necessity and possibility of unity so clearly, 
that, standing there as a warrior prophet, he 
made a profound impression and left a picture 
on my own mind, as he doubtless did on the 
minds of all who heard him, that cannot be 
forgotten. 


COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES 237 


As richly laden as were those years when 
he was pastor and producing books in theology 
that made new paths for those who were seek- 
ing to find their way out of theological entangle- 
ments, the crown of Doctor Smyth’s work was 
his contribution to Christian unity. His per- 
sistence and daring were elements that were 
needed. He made ventures and sought to find 
followers; but, whether his followers were few 
or many, the enthusiasm for his ventures burned 
in his heart like a perpetual fire. 

When one of his ventures, to which he had 
given much time and thought, had gone down 
in defeat both in his communion and the com- 
munion with which he was dealing, he said, 
without the slightest indication of disappoint- 
ment: “They don’t see it now; but they will 
see it. We must sweep out these archaic bar- 
riers and make a way where men can walk as 
brothers through all Christendom.” In his 
dream he always associated himself with the 
victory. He saw it with the prophet’s eye and 
rejoiced in what he saw. He still lives. Many 
of us will carry in our consciences his living 
voice. As he shared, without stint, in these 
pioneer days, he will share in our progress 
toward a united Christendom, and rejoice, in 
the distant years, when the prayer of Jesus 
that they all may be one shall have been ful- 
filled. 

With the gentleness of a child, with the faith 


238 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


of the devout, and with the courage of a prophet, 
Doctor Smyth has left us an extraordinary in- 
stance of fine character, which was clothed with 
the spirit of Christ, and through that character 
he ever sought to interpret that spirit. 


NEWMAN SMYTH—MINISTER OF 
RECONCILIATION 


BY JAMES DE WOLF PERRY, JR. 


HE lives of most men who are identified 
conspicuously with their times reflect 
prevailing currents of thought and of 

achievement. Very few there are who set these 
forces into motion. We have come here to com- 
memorate one of that small number, and to 
put on record one result, perhaps the chief re- 
sult, of his rare spirit. 

The story of the movement for church unity 
during the past half-century is contained in the 
history of Newman Smyth. The spectacle of 
the house of God divided against itself re- 
proached the conscience and offended the mind 
of Christendom, in the person of this one man, 
with the poignancy and shame which have al- 
ways characterized the champion of a neglected 
cause. For him the problem was one primarily 
of practical Christianity rather than of academic 
theory. He encountered it first in the field of 
service, not of theological research. As in the 
development of any new ccuntry the gulfs are 
bridged and the rough places smoothed by the 
resourceful hands of the pioneer before the 
genius of the scientist is invoked, so the vision 

239 


240 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


of a reunited church and the realization of it 
engaged Doctor Smyth’s powers of human sym- 
pathy and Christian fellowship. While others 
were vying with one another in speculation on 
the subject, he exemplified the practice of 
Christian unity. His ministry in New Haven 
became known to all men as a ministry of rec- 
onciliation. Clergy of many communions in 
this neighborhood and throughout Connecticut 
turned so naturally to his leadership as to be 
drawn almost involuntarily into singleness of 
thought and purpose. I was one of those par- 
ticularly privileged to have part in a group 
which found in him a bond of union and a source 
of inspiration. There was no conscious attempt 
at agreement. His presence and address sim- 
ply clarified the ecclesiastical atmosphere about 
him, dispelling prejudice and restoring right per- 
spectives. 

Those were the days of experimental the- 
ories in the pursuit of church unity, when eccle- 
siastical conclaves were putting forth on one 
hand ultimatums as a basis on which Noncon- 
formist bodies might be recognized, or on the 
other compromises under which differences of 
opinion could be hidden. It was refreshing then 
to follow him as he led us above and beyond 
the level of ecclesiastical banter and barter to 
heights of clear conviction and large compre- 
hension. In such an altitude one’s creed be- 
came the expression of personal communion 


COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES 241 


with God, so vivid, so vital, as to bring all who 
shared it into harmony of thought and feeling. 

Doctor Smyth once said that there is no 
surer mark of prophetic truth than that it rises 
of itself and is found shining in all men’s eyes. 
He may not have added, yet he proved in his 
own experience, that when an idea springs thus 
spontaneously to life it takes possession of the 
heart and finds utterance in the lips of some 
one man who becomes its mouthpiece. So, 
when the ideal of a reunited church grew away 
from the pious aspiration of a few to become a 
universal quest, it found a leader in this com- 
munity and this pulpit. 

The publication of “Passing Protestantism 
and Coming Catholicism” was a signal for a 
new era in the approach to unity. With the 
author it was not new. It resulted naturally 
from the experience of active ministry. It 
sprang from the conviction that Christianity, 
to prove itself the universal and final religion, 
must have complete mastery of human life. 
Such mastery cannot be acquired by a divided 
church. The sectarian, whether Protestant or 
Catholic, has but a partial gospel to declare. 
The only hope for union is to be found in the 
wholeness of the body bearing witness to the 
wholeness of truth. 

Such briefly is the thesis which Newman 
Smyth nailed to the door of the modern church. 
In it we may find the challenge to an old order 


242 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


and the promise of spiritual rebirth. The effect 
on the church was electric and the response 
immediate. In the same year that the volume 
appeared the Pan-Anglican Congress and Lam- 
beth Conference in London, to which particu- 
larly the challenge was addressed, took the first 
steps issuing finally in the “Lambeth Proposals” 
and the appeal to all Christian people. Soon 
there followed the organization of the Anglican 
and Nonconformist committee, and a state- 
ment from this source of agreement on matters 
of faith. In 1910 and 1911, at the instigation of 
the Episcopal Church in General Convention, 
the first commissions were appointed to con- 
sider a world conference on questions touching 
faith and order, with a view to ultimate reunion. 
Seventy-eight communions, representing forty 
nations, are now engaged in preparation for it. 
These and other movements with a like aim 
issued from a deep but often mute desire for 
reconciliation—but the reconciling principles 
had found articulate expression in one man’s 
message. Search as you may the approaches 
to unity contained in ‘Lambeth Proposals,” 
‘American Concordats,” or “Conferences on 
Faith and Order,” you will find in them all the 
traces of statements contained in the prophetic 
book and the later treatises on reunion by Doc- 
tor Smyth. You may hear in every utterance 
on the subject echoes of his words—who can 
forget them ?—as he pleaded for a creed so clear 


COMMEMORATIVE ADDRESSES 243, 


and comprehensive as to voice a universal faith, 
for a ministry so apostolic as to bear witness to 
that faith, and for sacraments so loyally admin- 
istered as to include all who would commune 
with Christ in sincerity and truth. 

Often he put us to shame by the resistless 
power of his conviction. Sometimes, especially 
in recent years, when the term of his active 
leadership drew to a close, he swept aside with 
splendid impatience the defenses with which 
we tried to fortify an overcautious faith. 

So clearly did he see the goal, that obstacles, 
whether polities, liturgies, canons, or confes- 
sions, had the same effect upon him as the Swiss 
mountains on Napoleon, when he declared: 
“There shall be no Alps.”’ Such courage and 
determination were destined to encounter dis- 
appointment. Inevitably, inexorably, the Alps 
raised their barriers across the path. Christians 
are not yet disposed nor trained to lay aside the 
weight of prejudice which so easily besets them, 
nor to rise above restrictions which have been 
so carefully imposed, so persistently cherished. 
In the defiles and morasses of controversy the 
armies of reconciliation have been sore let and 
hindered. Often the prospect of the promised 
land has grown obscure; often the voices of con- 
tending hosts have grown confused. The cru- 
sade for the recovery of Christian fellowship 
seems, at times, to have reached the darkest 
hour before the dawn. Yet through the night 


244 RECOLLECTIONS AND REFLECTIONS 


of disappointment and uncertainty the un- 
dimmed eye of one man has seen the destined 
goal, one man’s undaunted hope has kindled 
fires of courage in all hearts, one unfailing voice 
has borne witness to our Lord’s purpose that all 
may be one. : 

For us who knew and heard and honore 
him, and for succeeding generations, Newman 
Smyth will be remembered as the prophet of a 
united Christendom. 





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